


Now We Are Come To Our Kingdom

by cormallen



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dubious Consent, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-23
Updated: 2010-01-23
Packaged: 2017-10-06 15:08:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 51,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/54987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cormallen/pseuds/cormallen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been months since Dean sold his soul, and Sam's run himself ragged trying to find a way out, Chinatown to "Amber Moon", South Dakota to Connecticut. So far he's got nothing to show for it but some cryptic words – "You've got the 'what' and the 'where' and the 'when', and you think you're missing the 'how'. You aren't, of course, only you haven't figured that out yet." There's a possessed girl following him around, Dean's trying his hardest to drive Sam insane with jealousy, and the visions that were supposed to stop when Azazel died still wake him night after night after night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Watertown, SD to Belvedere, OH

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Big Bang 2008. Originally posted in 6 parts.  
> Huge thanks to everyone who helped me along the way -- handholding, reading pieces, making suggestions, poking at my demonology and everything else. You guys are awesome.  
> All of the Chinese phrases used in the story come from verifying separate words with various dictionaries and asking for specific translations around LJ comms. Given the method, there are bound to be errors. By all means, point them out and I will try to fix them.

**Watertown, SD**

_"A salt line? Really? You think salt's going to keep me away from him?"_

"If the salt won't, I will. You think this kind of thing goes down without my say-so?"

"Your say-so. Honey, I hate to spoil your little cock of the walk routine, but we're kind of pressed for time here."

"Make time."

"Oh, I do like it when you use the tough voice. Thing is, though, his soul's mine, fair and square. So, play nice and break the salt line, and he doesn't have to see you ripped to shreds before he goes. You can give him a good bye kiss if you want; promise I won't peek."

"You don't listen very well, do you? I'm not saying good bye. I found out something very interesting, going through my father's things."

"That whole thing with daddy, it really could have turned out a lot better. Oh well, you win some, you lose some. Besides, dead's dead, and daddy is a fucking doornail."

"So he is, but did you really think he'd leave me with nothing? Sorry, 'honey', it doesn't work that way. So play nice and tell me what I want to hear."

 

The hand that grips Sam's shoulder is unpleasantly cold, and he tries to roll away, burrowing further under the covers. The icy fingers don't let go, shaking at his arm, prodding into his skin; he shivers, still caught in the limbo between awake and not.

"Sam, for fuck's sake, they're going to think I'm murdering you in here. Come on, man, wake up."

He sits up, panting, blanket twisted between his legs, and almost collides with Dean's head. His brother smells like shampoo, and his hair is dripping cold all over Sam's sheets and t-shirt.

"I'm alright," Sam offers quickly, pre-empting the question, and pulls up on the blanket.

"Yeah? You were screaming. Heard you in there, even with the shower going."

"Had a nightmare," Sam mutters, struggling with the quilt. "Get off my blanket. You're wearing a towel, and you're getting water everywhere."

"Yeah," Dean agrees, but doesn't move. "It was a vision, wasn't it? Based on the decibels, I'd say it wasn't all fluffy bunnies and party hats, either. What did you see?"

"Nothing, okay? It wasn't anything like that. Just a really bad dream."

"Just a really bad dream," Dean repeats, raises an eyebrow, considering, and Sam finally succeeds in freeing the blanket from under his legs.

"Go finish your shower, and get some clothes on. We need to get moving," he says, rubbing at his forehead.

Dean gives him a glare, but complies, twists the bathroom door knob viciously, rattles the toothpaste and shaving cream extra loud against the sink.

"Like a small child," Sam sighs to no one in particular, pulls on pants and shirt, ties his sneakers. To his relief, there is a phonebook in the drawer, and he searches through it quickly, pages rustling, until he finds what he needs.

"Dean!" he yells to the bathroom door, "I'm gonna go down to the corner store, you want anything?"

Dean mutters something muffled by toothbrush, spits loudly, and turns on the water.

"Fine!" he tells the doorknob, and walks out into the dull grey morning.

***

The first two he tries are fakes; Sam can tell as soon as they open their mouths. Chakra alignment, aura tune-up. Guaranteed protection from the evil eye in three easy installments, Visa, Master Card, no personal checks. The third does Tarot spreads and brews thick, spicy coffee in a little brass pot.

"Cardamom and pepper," she clarifies in a practiced voice. "Authentic Turkish blend. I'll read the grinds free of charge, as a first-time bonus." Her full, flowered skirt sweeps the floor, silver bracelets ringing softly as she pours the coffee.

The contents of his cup have a dark, bitter taste, and promise rain, trouble sleeping, and a quarrel with a loved one.

"Stop by and have another with me - any time," she invites, waving him out the door. Sam thinks thirty dollars is far too steep a price for coffee, pepper notwithstanding.

He pulls the ripped phonebook page out of his pocket, smoothes it out on his palm and crosses "The Amber Moon" out with a thick swipe of marker. Zero for three; that finishes out Watertown. As it is, Sam's surprised that a South Dakota city with a population of less than twenty thousand boasts the services of three psychics. Even if two of them are charlatans, and the last is capable of only a weak daily forecast.

On the trek back to the motel, he ducks into a little convenience store, pays for newspapers and a bottle of juice, asks the girl at the counter for the restroom key. Smoothing out the phonebook page one more time, he stares at the "Gift and Specialty Shops" heading for a moment before ripping it and flushing the shreds.

***

Dean's already packed up the car, and is twirling the keys impatiently around his thumb.

"Took you long enough."

Sam shrugs, sliding into the passenger seat, and unfolds the first newspaper. He is pretending to read an article about an energy summit, but his stomach is tight with disappointment. He knows it was stupid to hope that he would stumble onto something on the very first day; it was even more stupid to hope that some Pagan Club co-ed with blonde dreadlocks and silver bangles would hold the answers to any of his questions. It occurs to him that they've only ever met one truly capable psychic, and even she hadn't been able to perform consistently. Even if she had been, Sam can't imagine calling Missouri and telling her… telling her what? That Dean made a deal with a demon? That he was going to die unless – unless – well, figuring out the "unless" is the problem, isn't it?

It'll be better in a bigger city, he decides; longer phone book, with an actual listing for occult shops and seers, not "Curiosities and Souvenirs".

Over the roar of the car against the pavement, it takes him a minute to realize that Dean is saying something; still, it doesn't sink in until his brother's hand smacks into the center of the newspaper, crumpling it into Sam's lap.

"What?"

"I said, 'I want my Skittles, bitch'. Twice. Hand them over."

Skittles.

"Why would I have – what?"

"What the fuck, Sam? You know, Skittles. Candy. Comes in a little red packet. Like the kind you said you'd get on your little walk earlier?"

Oh.

"I forgot," Sam sighs, "um… sorry?"

Dean smacks his hand back onto the steering wheel, lets out an exaggerated sigh.

"How the fuck do you forget your reason for going to the store in the first place?"

Sam holds up the newspaper; the energy summit article is boasting a brand new rip right through the center.

"I said I'd go get newspapers. I really don't remember you asking for candy, sorry."

"Fine," his brother grumbles, "fine! I'll forgive you if… if you let me have half of your juice."

"You hate apple."

"I do not," Dean says and reaches over, waving his hand in front of Sam's nose without taking his eyes off the road. Sam holds out the bottle, watches Dean take a tentative gulp and screw up his face.

"How do you drink this shit, dude?"

He chugs down the rest of the juice with a look of absolute disgust on his face, rolls down his window, and lets the bottle drop. The burst of glass against the pavement sounds like a tiny gunshot, and it makes Sam flinch.

***

It starts to sprinkle when they cross into Minnesota, and never lets up. Dean keeps on driving, Quiet Riot replacing AC/DC replacing Kansas on the radio, until rain is coming down in heavy grey sheets, somewhere near Rochester.

"Want me to take over?" Sam offers after they exit the Tri Town Diner, and once more when they fill up the car.

Dean shakes his head, and doesn't say a word until they're almost to Wisconsin. The peeling sign on the motel door proclaims they've made a sound lodging decision, but the mattresses are lumpy and Sam's pillow smells like stale smoke. Wind and rain knock relentlessly at the windowpane, and rumbles of distant thunder rival Dean's snoring.

They'll be in Chicago soon enough, Sam thinks, bedsprings creaking against his spine. Chicago has a Chinatown, Sam thinks, staring at the ceiling. Chicago has herb shops and covens and 1-800-psychics and Bobby'd mentioned a man who calls himself a White Sorcerer on Belmont Ave. _Longer phonebook, more listings; I'll fix it, Dean, I swear_.

"Longer phonebook, more listings," he whispers to lull himself to sleep.

 

**Chicago, IL**

The city meets them with clouds that twist and churn slowly around the skyline, black monolith of the Sears tower standing guard against the wind.

"You wouldn't happen to have an exact address hidden away somewhere in that freaky head of yours?" Dean asks, turning off of the interstate. "'Cause, I don't know about you, but I have no fuckin' idea how we're going to track this thing down. There's, what, three million people out here?"

"Just about," Sam says, watching street signs pass by in the passenger-side mirror, raindrops slithering down the glass.

"Might be more than just one came this way. How many do you think crawled out of that Devil's Gate altogether? Fifty? A hundred? News said people saw 'eerie black clouds' over what, seventeen cities? And Ellen said it was probably more."

"Yeah, Dean, I was there. And I did the math, too. Look, all we know is, there is at least one demon in the city; if it's more, then it's more. Nothing to be done for it now except try to be prepared. Checking if there've been any major power outages reported might be a good place to start."

"Weather's been shitty for days; pretty sure it's all gonna be trees and wind bringing power lines down."

Sam rolls his window down an inch, dips his fingertips into the cold air.

"Most of it probably will be. But if there are any they can't explain, anything the city can't account for…" he trails off, wipes his wet hand on the hem of his sweatshirt.

"Alright," Dean says, unconvinced, and pulls the car into a mostly empty parking lot. "Go get the room; I'll grab dinner, no sense in wasting more time."

***

In the end, convincing Dean they will cover more ground if they split up proves to be much easier than Sam anticipated. He watches his brother eagerly digging through his stash of IDs and badges in search for just the right ones, whistling as he knots his tie and combs gel through his hair in front of the small mirror, and wonders how he could have missed it before. Dean _wants_ to go out by himself.

Sam doesn't bother cataloguing this new thing between them, the strange, grating discomfort that's all too similar to the first few months after Stanford, except for one glaring difference. After Stanford, hell was behind him. His illusion of a life had come crashing down around him in fire and blood, Jess watching him hit rock bottom from the ceiling. But that's the beauty of rock bottom, Sam thinks, as Dean buttons up his suit jacket and pulls on his cuffs; there is nowhere to go but up. This time, they haven't hit yet. They're pinned on the ceiling, and hell watches from below.

He ties his own tie, folds his shirt collar carefully against the lapels of his suit and feels for the phonebook pages in his pocket, Bobby's list of additional people he should see tucked between them.

***

The "Good Fortune" is in Chinatown, dried flower arrangements hanging in the dirty windows, door painted an inviting bright red. A bell rings loud and long as Sam steps in, inhaling the shop's sickly sweet incense.

The guy behind the counter is short and squat, with a thin line of beard curling down his chin; he furrows his brows at Sam, fingers a gold charm at his pale throat.

"I'm here to see Madame Fen," Sam tells him, "I called this morning."

The guy mutters something under his breath in what Sam assumes is Chinese, clutches his necklace in a thick fist.

"I made an appointment," Sam repeats. "My name is -"

"No!" the man cuts him off; he's breathing heavily, and a fat droplet of sweat climbs slowly down his nose. "No, no. Fen!" he calls out suddenly, follows it up with more frenzied Chinese. "Fen!"

A door slams upstairs, the old woman running down fast, and she is out of breath as she gets to the bottom floor, steps into the shop from behind a beaded curtain.

"Oh" is all she says when the clerk points in Sam's direction, but her mouth works soundlessly for a few moments, and she holds her small, wrinkled hands in front of her, palms out.

"You no come here," she manages finally, her voice as wizened as the rest of her. "We no help your kind. Go. Not belong here."

"What?" He is so taken aback by her response that his own voice is shaky. "You're not gonna… you don't help 'my kind'? That's just - oh, you've got to be kidding me. You mean you don't deal with non-Chinese? Is that it? 'My kind'?"

She nods, pleased with his understanding, repeats, "Go now. Not belong. Not help your kind."

"How's that even – do you know what year it is out there – never mind. I'll just be showing myself out," he manages, looking down at her grey knotted hair. She nods again, grabs at the door as he exits. Sam turns around just in time to see her putting up a "closed" sign – in English.

"Man, that is just wrong," he mutters to himself as he crosses the street, but he doesn't get very far before he hears the shrill, grating yell.

"Hey. Hey!" a woman screeches behind him. "Hey, I'm talking to you! Yes, you, you fucking _si san ba_ trespasser! Stop!"

"Now I'm trespassing, too?"

Sam whirls around, practically ready to throw a punch, and cannot help it. He starts laughing as the girl hurdles towards him. She is absurd; barely five feet tall, maybe eighteen, but probably not yet, and if she gets any louder, his eardrums are going to burst.

People are staring, giving her a wide berth; a fruit vendor has shoved a crude "back in ten minutes" sign on top of the oranges and retreated into a nearby doorway. Sam has time to notice a "closed" sign going up against the glass there as well, but then she grabs him by the arm, and Sam stops laughing. Static shock travels from her fingers to his skin, makes him shudder.

"What. The. Fuck. Are you doing here, _yao-mo-wang_?" she hisses, and the street around them quickly empties.

"I, uh… Uh… Do I know you?" Sam can't think of anything else to say, short of "what the fuck is wrong with you people today", and maybe he does mutter that last bit out loud, because she is screaming again, fingers digging into him like claws.

"_Ni juede wo hen ben ma_? You think I'm stupid? What's wrong with _me_? What's wrong with _you_? We had a deal, you stay the fuck out of my business, and I stay the fuck out of yours. So, due respect, what the hell are you doing here, _yao-mo-wang_?"

"I think you have me confused with someone else," he stammers, shaking his arm loose, but the little woman isn't letting go.

"Confused with someone else," she mocks, "are you fucking serious?"

She mutters something else in Chinese, a smattering of words that are as cryptic as anything that's come out of her mouth so far, "_Cao ni ma! Zhao shi zhe_ does feel different, isn't that fucking wonderful!"

Five angry red welts bloom on his forearm as she releases her grip and sets her fists on her hips, smiles an awkward toothy smile.

"I am so fucking sorry. So, so damn sorry! I don't know what came over me. I, uh, just completely mistook you for somebody else entirely, fuck, I… Listen, I, uh, don't have words enough to apologize. Want me to get you an, I dunno, an icepack, or a band-aid for your arm, or something?"

Sam doesn't want an icepack; Sam wants to get as far away from Chinatown as he possibly can, as fast as his legs will carry him. The sentiment must be showing loud and clear in his expression; the girl is blushing, pulling awkwardly at her shirt.

"Seriously, I am so sorry. I fucked up. Don't go; let me make it up to you, please! Please? What were you doing here, anyway?"

"I was trying to get a reading, over there across the street," he tells her grudgingly. "Obviously, it didn't work out."

She cocks her head, eyes him up and down, mouth still stretched in a fierce grin.

"A reading? Are you fucking serious? That's… fuck, that's something else. A reading, god-fucking-damn!" She suddenly shakes her head, as if remembering something important. "Um. I'm not scoring any forgiveness points with you, am I. Sorry. It's just, the guy I thought you were, the idea of him needing that bitch Fen to do a reading, it's fucking crazy. Fucking, just, insane. Fuck. I say that a lot, I know. Versatile little word you Americans came up with, it rolls off of the tongue so easily, I can't help it. I mean, some people find it pretty offensive, but there's just no substitute. Anyway, I'll read for you."

Sam laughs awkwardly, considers using the versatile little word to tell the girl exactly what she should be doing right now, but she anticipates it.

"I mean it. I said I'd make it up to you, and I will." She digs through her pockets, scrunching up her forehead, until she finds what she is looking for with a triumphant "A-ha! Here you go."

Sam takes the little white card she offers, scans it quickly with his eyes. There are three Chinese characters printed above the words "Grace Bai. Seer", a phone number and an e-mail address. She gestures towards a narrow side street.

"I'll do your reading. Now, step into my office."

***

The office turns out to be a drafty studio above a closed restaurant; the girl leads Sam up squeaky stairs and kicks open the door. A pale, tattooed man stops flicking through channels as they enter, gets up off of the black leather couch.

"Gu Jing. Please tell me this doesn't mean what I think it does." The man forms his words carefully, eyebrows raised, nips at his bottom lip with sharp white teeth.

"Don't get your panties in a bunch; it's not what it fucking looks like. Fen threw little _huang yan_ here out of her place, and he is all lost, confused, and looking for some guidance and direction."

"And you've taken it upon yourself to provide the, um, guidance and direction? Gu Jing," he runs his hand through short, spiky hair the color of a ripe peach, "since when do we do that?"

"You don't have to do anything except get me a fucking bowl, Hu. There's a bottle of peroxide in the cabinet over there, grab that, too, would you? And some tissues, and the good knife, and there should be band-aids with the peroxide, sometime today, yeah?"

Hu mutters something in Chinese, and she giggles, turning to Sam, motions towards the vacant couch.

"Sit. Get comfy. I'd normally say, 'make yourself at home', but there's a pretty slim chance of you feeling that today. So," she hitches up her sleeves, "how do you wanna do it? Do you want to ask me a question, or just let me tell you what I see? I can start talking once Hu gets his ass over here with my supplies, and you stop me when it gets interesting, maybe get into specifics."

"Specifics," Sam repeats, sinking into the soft, squeaky leather, wonders what sort of story the girl will spin as she plays at being Jeanne Dixon. He is wasting time in Gu Jing's cold apartment, watching her argue with her boyfriend, and he's wasting Dean's time, too. He's already wasted twelve days, eighteen hours and nine minutes, with nothing to show for them but crumpled lists lined with black marker, rotting in trash cans across four states.

"Thanks, Hu, you're a fucking sweetheart," Gu Jing says, taking the bundle from his hands. The man nods, throws a quick little grin in Sam's direction, but only his mouth smiles. Above the pointed nose and sharp cheekbones, his eyes remain narrowed and wary. He sits cross legged on the floor, cocks his head at Sam as the girl sets the porcelain bowl on the coffee table next to the army knife.

"Here, pick a finger. Ring's best, or thumb." She holds out a peroxide-moistened tissue to Sam, swipes a second one over the knife. "Give me your hand and say which one."

"Ring," Sam says in disbelief, and in seconds, she's squeezing the pad of his finger over the bowl, watching the blood drip, counting, one, two, five, seven, nine; Hu shoves the box of band-aids forward. She smears the red over the china, finger-paints a little circle, brings the bowl to her face and sniffs. Her tongue darts out, swishes over the bowl, once, twice, tasting the air, and Sam is relieved when she doesn't lick.

"You Americans have this stupid fucking saying," she offers casually, as if her mouth isn't inches away from a dish glazed with Sam's blood. "Every problem is an opportunity in disguise. Bullshit, right? Ninety nine percent of the time, problem's just a problem, sticks, stones and all. You, _mowang, huang yan_, you are special. You have that one percent thing working for you."

She dips her finger into the bowl and swirls it around again, making nonsensical patterns; holds her hand to the light, watches the dark red stain over her skin. Her lips wrap around, sink down slowly, and when she talks again, there is a fleck of Sam's blood on her lower lip.

"I get what's happening, now," she exclaims, delighted, "damn, that is fucking glorious. Not unprecedented, of course, but, fuck, these kinds of things are pretty much a once per century occurrence. Anyway, back to your little problem – and I'm telling you, you really have to stop thinking about it like that, because you already have all the solution you'll fucking need. I'm sure it doesn't seem that way, but you've got the 'what' and the 'where' and the 'when', and you think you're missing the 'how'. You aren't, of course, only you haven't figured that out yet. You will, don't worry. As a matter of fucking fact, one of your hows is in the city right now, waiting for you – well, not so much with the waiting, more with the hiding and hoping you'll go away, but you get my point."

"No, actually, I really don't. Listen, Gu Jing… Grace? I appreciate, um, what you're trying to do here, but I'm not angry about the misunderstanding anymore, alright? I'm sure you have more important things to do, and I have to get back to – "

She pours peroxide into the bowl, wipes it down with a tissue.

"Go wash it out," she tells Hu, and he obeys, hopping gracefully to his feet. "Sam," she continues, "you aren't listening to me. I'm trying to tell you something real fucking important here. You have what you need. You just need to learn how to work with it."

She pauses, distinctly pleased with her pretense at a revelation, and Sam decides he's had enough.

"Yeah, thanks. You know, that bunch of bull might have sounded a lot more impressive without all the 'fucking'. The blood thing, that was really good, very flashy, if a bit disgusting. You might want to consider, though, that most people aren't going to just let you cut into them like that. And, I guess, harassing unsuspecting passerby in the street is a valid way of getting customers, if a little extreme – what?"

Gu Jing quirks a plucked eyebrow, trades smiles with Hu.

"I'll take that into account."

"I'll let myself out," he tells her, and she nods.

"Hey, _huang yan_," she calls after him, "my business hours are Monday through Saturday."

"Yeah. I'll keep that in mind."

***

He calls Bobby from the street outside, counts the rings, trying to remember the distance from Bobby's kitchen to the phone, from the bedroom, from the porch. Bobby answers on the fifth ring, and from the sound of his "Go ahead," his day hasn't gone much better, either.

"Well, you can count Chicago as a bust," Sam sighs into the cell, feeling drained. "Out of fifteen – no, make that sixteen – eleven were frauds. Two offered to read Tarot, and one of them managed to do a half-way decent job. Figured out that that both my parents died suddenly in related incidents, and spent the better part of the half-hour trying to find a way to phrase that nicely. The fifteenth doesn't work with tourists, only residents of Chinatown."

On the end of the line, Bobby coughs, or maybe chuckles.

"The last one takes the cake, though. She had an entire solicitation routine based around harassment and mistaken identity; unfortunately, she followed it up with the most generic drivel I've heard in a while. 'Every problem is an opportunity in disguise', 'Deep down, you already know what to do, you just need to figure out what it is that you know', that sort of … Shit! Hang on, Bobby."

Sam can't believe he hasn't thought of it earlier; should've realized it the moment Gu Jing plowed into him. He checks his pants pocket, and is pleasantly surprised to find that his wallet is still where he last put it.

"You didn't think you'd come across whatcha looking for so quick, did you, Sam?" Bobby goes on for a few minutes more, lists name after name after name, reminds Sam that Rome wasn't built in a day, assures him that he's got favors to call in and people to hear back from. He is logical and calm and absolutely correct, but Sam doesn't feel any better knowing that. Dean isn't a favor or a city. Even though Sam hasn't ever been to Rome, he is certain that he'd gladly take it apart brick by brick and not bother putting it back together again if there were answers underneath.

When he gets back, tired and more than a little hungry, he sees that Dean is pacing their room like a mechanical sentry, nine steps from corner to corner on the diagonal. He snaps at attention at the click of the lock, marches right up to intercept. There's a _look_ in Dean's eyes, not quite worry, not quite anger, something else stirred into the mix, and that look is focused on Sam, scrutinizing, penetrating. For a moment, Sam feels all of sixteen again, and that feeling doesn't go away as Dean starts to speak.

"Where the fuck were you?" he questions, voice unusually, deceptively calm. He glances at the clock on the nightstand, and they both know that's for emphasis; Dean knows perfectly well what time it is. "Where were you for five hours, not answering your phone?"

"Um, working? Doing research? You know, that thing I said I was going to do?"

"Right, research," Dean says, fiddling with his collar. He's taken off his jacket, tie, and dress shoes; Dean hates suits, knows he has a tendency to look as uncomfortable as he feels wearing them. He pops the top button of the shirt, then the next, and Sam sees the brief glint of amulet in the hollow of his throat before Dean buttons up again, fingers moving reflexively up and down.

"Here," Sam offers up a manila folder full of print-outs, something he put together at the public library branch before moving on to Chinatown. He fans out the weather reports, temperature charts, sunset, moonrise, dew point, barometric pressure, several weeks worth ordered in neat rows.

"It's definitely abnormal, for June. Sudden spike in pressure two days ago, and the –"

Dean nods, pulling the buttons open one more time; the thread on the second one down is worn, stretched out, and the button looks like it's going to spring loose at any moment.

"That took you five hours? We already know there's a demon here, not like we need the confirmation. Dammit!"

The button slips between Dean's fingers, lands on the floor with a small clink and lazily rolls under the bed and out of sight.

"How did you do?" Sam's voice comes out a touch too strained, too defensive, but Dean only shakes his head and pulls his shirttails loose from his pants.

"About as well as you," he sighs, balling the shirt up and aiming for an open bag. "This is a goddamn wild goose chase. I mean, this demon's gotta be here for _something_, but it's doing what, sitting around and waiting? Hate to say it, but unless there are some deaths or some other majorly freaky shit going down, we got no way to find it." Dean dives head first into a blue tee shirt, and Sam watches the fabric slide over his hair with a crackle of static. "Unless, of course, it decides it wants to find us, which would actually make things a lot easier. Hey, that'd be a first."

Dean doesn't bother going into the bathroom to change; years spent in close quarters have cured both of them of any pretense at modesty. He shimmies out of the dress pants with a sigh of relief and pulls the jeans up his legs. As he bends down, Sam notices a small tear in his boxers, where the waistband is fraying away from the seat, and it jars him, keeps his eyes on his brother for moments longer than necessary.

Dean's things are falling apart, and Sam knows that a week ago, he would hardly have noticed a trifle like a button or a ripping seam. Today it feels disturbingly like an omen. He shoos the thought away, tells himself they've always been tough on clothes as he stares at the curve of Dean's thigh, the small white scar on the back of his left knee. He keeps staring even as the scar and the shorts disappear under a layer of denim, and Dean turns around, zipper going up with a snick.

"What?"

"I think you, uh, need some new clothes," Sam says, and Dean rolls his eyes, pulls his belt closed around his waist.

"I need a beer," he says, "or six. And I could really go for some onion rings right now. Scratch that, not onion rings, one of those onion blossom things, you know, with the horseradish stuff on top? Come on, I saw a place a couple of blocks that way, big-ass sign in the window for Nickel Night Thursday."

***

Nickel Night means a five-dollar cover from each of them; Dean does the math and proclaims anything from their fourth bottle on totally worth it. Ted's doesn't have deep-fried whole onions, but beer-battered onion rings are deemed to be a reasonable substitute, and they demolish half the basket waiting for their grinders, another Ted's specialty advertised with a large stenciled sign. "Call 'em hoagies, subs or heroes, we've got 'em," it says in a cheerful red over a listing of meats and vegetables. Dean has a steak bomb; Sam, an eggplant parm, hot and thickly loaded with melted cheese.

There are pool tables in the back; Dean generously buys beers for a couple of college kids he's divested of far more than ten cents over the course of the evening. The place gets packed at around eleven, girls in tank tops, girls with Northwestern, De Paul and Chicago State lettered on their chests, guys in polos and band tees and button-downs, music getting louder over the tiny dance floor.

Sam runs his nails over the label of his fourth beer, peels at the corner until the soggy paper comes off in curling strips. He is too warm and almost unpleasantly full, and his head feels heavy, eyelids drooping. He pushes the bottle aside and rests his chin on his folded hands, watches Dean slide his cue back into the rack and make his way back to the bar in steady energetic steps. It's odd, Sam thinks, that he feels like a sated snake, groggy and dormant after a meal and some drinks, while his brother moves like he hasn't made full use of his cover charge, eyes scanning the crowd, aware and steady.

A redheaded girl smiles at Dean and he smiles back, toothy and welcome; she throws her head back and laughs, Dean's mouth moving a mile a minute. They step closer together, then closer still; all that's left now is more beer and the undoubtedly important decision of bathroom or car, her place or theirs. Sam is certain their room will win out, the least distance for the most comfort.

"I wish this demon would show itself already," Dean'd said earlier. "If there's supposed to be a war coming, why is it waiting around doing nothing?"

Sam had retorted with a sour "be careful what you wish for," but watching Dean's arm settling around the redhead's waist, he ponders the chances of her eyes turning black after a whispered "Christo". One in three million; no way are they that lucky.

The headache hits him as he gets up to use the bathroom; the push of bodies, the dance beat, the smell of beer and perfume and sweat mixing in the hot, stagnant air make yellow spots float through his vision, and he feels his way along the wall like a drunk, clutching at the chipped tile. The vision comes in quick, sharp snaps, a flash of street sign, a red gate, a brick building, then it's gone, and Sam steadies himself against the sink, runs the tap, waiting for the pain to recede.

The water is blessedly cool against his forehead; he pulls wet hands through his hair, presses his fingertips into his skull. Deep breaths, he tells himself, exhaling loud and long, counting each lungful; his head feels better after he reaches fifteen, the pain reduced to a niggling pulse in his temples.

He cups his hands under the tap and swallows a few mouthfuls before going back out into the bar proper; on the floor, Dean is still talking to the redhead, and a second girl has joined them, little jean skirt and dark hair pulled into two short, tight braids. Sam heads straight for the exit, and doesn't feel all that guilty as he pulls his phone from his pocket, thumbing the call button as he steps into the street.

"I found the demon," he says when Dean picks up. "Meet me outside?"

***

"You gonna try to tell me that was just a dream, too?" Dean asks as they cross the street, stoplights flashing intermittent yellow in the wet night air.

"You know what it was," Sam says, and Dean nods, gives Sam a quick glance from under furrowed brows.

"You ok?"

"I'm fine. That's the building. I must've walked by it at least twice today and didn't feel anything out of the ordinary."

"How 'bout now?"

"No, nothing," Sam says, and knows he is wrong as soon as the word leaves his mouth. His head no longer aches, but the strange little pulse is still there, a faint presence that gets louder as they approach the building, broken windows like stains on the brick facade. The bottom floor is boarded up, metal gates pulled shut over a few of the doors, but the third one from the corner is unlocked, just as Sam knew it would be. There are stairs leading up and down to the basement, and Dean switches on a flashlight, drags the beam over dirty, graffiti-covered walls, a printed sign proclaiming the place private property.

"What do you think, up or down?"

"Upstairs," Sam grunts without thinking, but it's the right answer. The pulse feels like it's right on top of him, thumping in his ears, drumming through his veins, frenzied, angry. He kicks in the second door on the left and strides in, Dean on his heels, shotgun and flask of holy water held high.

There is a boy kneeling in the corner, scrawny arms wrapped tightly about his chest, head bent low.

"Mistress, I can't do it," he whimpers without looking up, "she is too strong for me to deal with, please, I –" he looks up; below the short blond curls, the eyes are a dead and solid black, unblinking. When the demon speaks again, the begging has gone out of its voice, replaced with a cool, matter-of-fact tone, disturbingly at odds with its host's small frame.

"Oh, fuck me. It's you," it says, coming to its feet. "I suppose it's too much to hope for that you and Mistress have finally come to an agreement and you're here to lend a helping hand?"

"An agreement with whatever the fuck you work for?" Dean snorts, and the demon grins at him.

"The Winchesters have given up on dealing with demons? Say it ain't so! However, I wasn't referring to you. So," it cocks the boy's head at Sam, "you aren't working with Melchiresa, then. I don't blame you; were I in your position, I'd do the same. Alas, I was made for service, not for lordship, and I haven't time to waste."

The demon lifts up its hands almost lazily, a motion so practiced it needn't follow the palms with its eyes, and the room flies by Sam, the wall viciously meeting the back of his skull. Dean groans in the corner, trying to reach for the shotgun that is no longer in his hands, but the demon only smiles, and the weapon glides obediently towards its feet.

"Huh. _You_ are what she is worried about? No, don't move," the demon says, and Sam's legs limply fold towards the floor. Pain spikes through his ankle as he goes down, and the demon stretches, rolls its shoulders with a satisfied hiss. Its slim hand points at Sam's throat, crooking as if in invitation, and Sam feels those fingers wrapping around his neck, squeezing lightly.

"Just a meatbag," the demon sighs, clenching its fist, and the phantom fingers crush at Sam's throat. He gasps for air, feeling the burn cresting through his chest, his mouth. Red burns through his vision, yellow stains turning fuzzy and black. He is sinking into fire, and when the flames close over his head, _she_ is standing in front of him, a smug little smile crooking her pale face. _Not now_, he wants to scream, _this is not the time for another vision, no – _ but he hears the words all the same.

_"Don't waste his last minutes on empty threats. Come on; break the salt line, and I'll let you have time for a nice good bye."_

"Not saying good bye, remember? Do I have to tell you everything twice?"

"Sweetheart, you can say it as many times as you like, but not a one will make it so."

"That's where you're wrong, sister."

"You don't have a sister."

"I guess you're right. Come on, 'sweetheart', I'm giving you a chance to offer back what's mine."

"Remind me again, what's yours here?"

"Everything."

The room floats into painful focus; Sam's tongue fills up his mouth, a sour, hot, swollen thing. A great big bell is ringing in his skull, its weight crushing into his throat, the deafening pulse of it almost drowning out the demon's satisfied voice.

"…not who Mistress sent me for, but who knew the pair of you'd be here? I daresay she'll be happy enough. Stop trying to move, Dean, that's a good boy."

Maybe it's his brother's name on the creature's lips, the burn in his lungs, or the blood hammering in his ears, but something snaps inside him. Sam shoves forward as hard as he can, every fiber of him pushing desperately against the hand denying him air, until he's suddenly drawing a painful, heavy breath. The demon howls as it hits the wall, then lies quiet and perfectly still, and Sam realizes he hasn't moved a muscle.

He stands up slowly, watches Dean do the same, rubs tentatively at his neck. Every breath feels like a lead weight in his chest.

"Just get the devil's trap drawn," he rasps before Dean can say anything about what happened, and pulls the rope out of his bag. He yanks the boy's scrawny wrists together, binding them up tight, then cinches up his ankles and drags the limp body into the middle of the floor.

"Come on, you bastard, wake up so we can get you the hell out of here" Dean prompts, nudging the boy with his boot. "I'd better say the words myself, huh, Sammy?"

Sam only nods through the ache in his throat as the demon's eyes snap open.

"Fool!" the demon spits, struggling against the bonds, but they don't give as Dean begins the exorcism. "You think these words will be enough to undo her? She will break you."

"…in nomine Dei Patris Omnipotentis," Dean growls, "in nomine Jesu."

"Why aren't you saying the words, Samuel? What's got your tongue? I kno-ow, I kno-ow," the demon sing-songs.

Should've gagged him, Sam thinks, and shuts his eyes as the demon lets out a desperate wail.

"Vade, satana, magister omnis fallaciae."

"She will dance on your bones long before your year is up," the demon gurgles, and Dean grits his teeth, says the words louder and louder until he is nearly screaming, "…qui venturus est judicare vivos et mortuos, et saeculum per ignem!"

Even without opening his eyes, Sam knows the exact moment the demon is cast out. The tugging, niggling point of pressure is gone from his head, but it's not replaced by relief. He feels blind, suddenly helpless, as if their next enemy is right around the corner, lurking undetected. He hears Dean say something vaguely reassuring to the kid, maybe "not your fault" or "let me help" as he unties the ropes, then the patter of feet across the floor, away, down the stairs, and out of earshot.

"Come on, boy wonder, let's get the hell outta here."

***

It's three in the morning when they get back to the room, and Dean heads straight for his bed.

"I'm fine," he says when Sam offers to patch him up, "real tired, though. That was a long freakin' day."

He unlaces his boots, and is out in moments, hand tucked under his cheek. Sam sits at the computer for a good half hour longer before calling Bobby. Unsurprisingly, the phone goes straight to voicemail, and Sam omits the vast majority of the encounter, letting the machine record only that they exorcized the demon, but not before it mentioned a mistress, the name Melchiresa, and Dean's deal.

"I don't know if this has anything to do with the crossroads demon – it was likely just mocking us – but I've never heard that name before, I'm not coming up with anything useful searching, and I want to be prepared. Thanks, Bobby, good night."

 

**Lincoln, NE**

They can hear the cicadas buzzing even before Dean kills the engine; a disturbingly loud hum grinding through the muggy afternoon air.

"Hear that? Can't be a good sign," Dean mutters, feeling for his guns; the smell doesn't hit them until they walk up to the porch, Sam's hand poised to knock on the latched screen door.

"Oh, god, that's awful," he cringes, covering his nose. It's almost sweet, stale, rotten fruit and something else, sickening and harsh, underneath. "Definitely not a good sign. Hey," he raises his voice, calls out through the netting. "Hey, anybody home?"

There's no response. A large, fat fly crawls down the screen as Sam fiddles with the latch; it doesn't quite reach his fingers as the screen door gives, swinging open.

"Jesus."

The first body is in the kitchen, arms stretched out over the grimy linoleum tile, flowered dress ripped at the hem and trailing pink thread over the dead girl's skinny pale legs. Dark, old blood crusts over her hands, fingers bent like claws into the floor; more blood stains the back of her dress and her bleached blond hair.

Sam feels the bile rise in his throat, and looks away, thankful he can't see her face, when Dean calls from the living room. More bodies arranged carefully on the couch, a man and a woman leaning into each other in front of the TV like they just sat down to watch, but they're days dead, silent and sightless.

They make their way upstairs; Dean opens a bedroom door and shuts it almost immediately, mouth drawn in a tight, bitten line.

"Don't look in there," he says through his teeth when Sam taps him on the shoulder. "Kids, three of 'em. Nothing we can do."

They find the last one in the master bathroom, a man cramped into the tight space between the toilet and the sink, arms clutched tightly to his chest, grey tongue lolling out between his mangled, broken lips.

"Jesus. Jesus, fuck, what happened here," Sam manages, leaning heavily onto the sink. Dean shakes his head, brows furrowed, and nudges the body with his boot.

"Something really fucked up. Looks like both his legs were broken. Wait, you hear that?" Dean says suddenly, putting out a finger. "Shh."

A door thuds downstairs, then another, followed by steps; Sam listens, head cocked, then nods at his brother.

"Two," he mouths, before they creep out into the hallway, guns at the ready; the footsteps are getting closer, thudding up the creaky staircase.

"Ready?"

There is a cross thrust into Sam's face as they turn the corner.

"Christo," yells a striking, dark-skinned woman, short hair brushed away from her face. She grasps the cross with one hand, a large curved dagger with the other; close behind her is a man wielding a heavy shotgun.

"Christo? Man, we're not possessed – hey, hey, you wanna watch where you point that thing," Dean sputters, recoiling from the blade, but neither the woman nor the man put down their weapons.

"Bishop didn't mention anyone else was working this gig," the woman says, eyes flashing back and forth between Sam's face and Dean's.

"Bishop? Big guy, big scar, eye patch, walks with a limp?"

"That'd be him," the man confirms, and Dean grins wide.

"Did a couple jobs with him back in '03," he says, lowering his gun. "Can't believe the old bastard's still kicking around."

They do the introductions outside; Sam catches their names, Isaac and Tamara, but tunes out the rest, _Bishop, couple jobs in '03_ running endlessly through his mind like a hamster in a wheel. Dean and he have never sat down and talked about what life had been like when Sam'd left for Stanford. He thinks they could describe it in the most general of terms, _Sam had Jess and wanted to be a lawyer, Dean and Dad carried on as they always had, what more is there to tell_, but it's a gap nevertheless, a piece of Dean he knows nothing about, and probably won't ever, except for in accidental bits and pieces like this. _Bishop, big guy, eye patch_; he tries to conjure it up, salt and pepper hair and a wicked scar bisecting the man's grizzled cheek, pale white and twisted, pulling on the skin until it disappears under the round swatch of black cloth. Dean had never mentioned him before, and Sam wonders if Dad had been there, if they got along badly, or maybe too well, if Dean had run into him by accident or had been asked along. He doesn't even know what they had been hunting.

Isaac's irate voice breaks through the haze, and Sam blinks, tries to focus on the words as Tamara plants a steadying hand on Isaac's shoulder.

"Honey, everyone makes mistakes. Like you've never done something you weren't proud of."

"Sure," Isaac says, taking a step forward. "Locked my keys in the car a few times, ran a red shirt through with my whites, turned my laundry pink. Never opened a Devil's Gate, though, or let a legion of demons out of hell! There aren't enough hunters in the world as is, without you two fools trying to start a goddamn Apocalypse."

"Oh, hey, why don't you tell us how you really feel," Dean smirks, spreading his hands wide; Sam knows the gesture all too well. To anyone who hasn't lived with Dean long enough to enumerate and catalogue every grin, every pose, he doesn't seem threatening; not yet. It's still looking like cocky bravado, a little annoyance covered up with a little sarcasm, but Sam can see the twitch of vein over Dean's temple, the tense arc of his spine.

"Come on, guys – Dean – this really isn't helping. We –"

Dean cuts him off without so much as a glance, hands balling up into fists.

"Nah. I wanna hear it. Come on, man, let it all out."

They're too close now; another step and it'll be beyond uncomfortably so. Dean cracks his knuckles, and Isaac shakes his head, crooks his mouth in barely concealed disgust.

"You heard me. You brought a demon war down – on all of us. So why don't the two of you just get in that big shiny car and get the hell out of here, before you make any more idiotic mistakes!"

Sam isn't fast enough to stop Dean from throwing a punch; Tamara is pulling at her husband's shirt, yelling his name, but to no effect. A heavy fist finds a cheekbone, another lands on a jaw, sharp tang of blood rising in Sam's nostrils, and god, this is just what they need right now.

"Stop it," he yells, grabbing onto Dean's sleeve, "stop it, damn it, _stop_!"

A sharp burst of pain blazes through his skull, and Sam falters, presses a hand to his forehead and blinks his eyes, once, twice, until it's gone. When he lifts up his head, Dean is rubbing a finger over his nose, and Isaac is staring at him with something like fear in his eyes, one hand clasping Tamara's tightly.

"What in the hell was that? You did something to me – made me – what the hell kind of hunter are you? You – you made me _stop_! You –"

Sam stumbles back, opens his mouth to say something, anything, looking helplessly at his brother for some sort of reassurance, but Dean isn't looking at him at all; he is focused back on the house, eyebrows scrunched together, already reaching for his holster.

"Uh, guys," he says, quiet but sharp, "this is definitely not the best time for this, but I think we got company."

Behind the screen door, something's moving.

It's the girl, Sam realizes as they get closer, pink dress hanging loose on her narrow shoulders, and for a moment, relief floods his chest, until he remembers the crook of her fingers, the blood dried onto her skin, the awkward bent of her neck as she lay on the floor, and words and breath catch in his throat.

The girl isn't alone. A little boy clings to her legs, pulls at the back of her bloodied dress as she stumbles through to the porch, a dark gory mess where his face ought to be, thick black ichor sliding down in sickening, terrible droplets.

"Oh, god," Tamara gasps behind him, and the girl's head snaps up, eyes glowing like two burning coals in her dead, grey-mottled face.

"What the fuck are you waiting for," Dean barks, "shoot the damn thing already," and Sam finally forces himself into motion, lifting his gun with a steady hand, the world dissolving into a pattern of step, aim and fire.

***

Even with silver bullets, they don't go down easy. They aren't anything like the zombie they dealt with last year, a car crash victim raised by an overzealous friend. Barely aware, but they move fast on their mangled limbs, talon-like hands slicing through the air, teeth bared. Sam empties a clip into the dead girl's chest before she finally stays on the ground, eyes rolling back into her skull, hands still uselessly clawing at the dirt. Isaac follows with the shotgun; Dean and Tamara are already inside, "Gotta make sure the rest of them stay down, you take the living room, move, now, now," as they move through the hallways; the smell is worse now than it had been a half-hour ago, and Sam takes shallow, measured breaths as he looks through the door.

The couch in front of the television is empty; he moves along carefully, listening for a telling noise; still, the thing takes him by surprise, thick fingers wrapping around his throat from behind. Ragged, unnaturally sharp nails shred into his skin; he can smell the creature's fetid breath as its mouth opens over his shoulder. Sam kicks out, trying to twist from its grasp when suddenly its hold on him falters.

It hits the floor with a wet, heavy thump, an ornate, curved knife protruding from its misshapen neck, and Sam is about to turn around and thank Tamara for her help when he sees a small, pale hand reaching down to retrieve the dagger.

"Who the hell are you?" he rasps, rubbing at the aching flesh between his throat and shoulder.

The woman cocks her blonde head and wipes the knife blade on the dead man's shirtsleeve before returning it back to a sheath strapped around her left leg.

"I'm the girl who just saved your ass. You should really be more careful. Anyway, I think they're done upstairs, so I'm gonna head."

"Wait," he calls out, as she waves at him from the doorway.

"See you around, Sam."

She's gone before he catches his breath, hands pressed into his sides, and he hears the front door slam just as Tamara walks down the stairs.

"We'll take care of the bodies, but you and your brother had better go, Winchester," she says quickly, trying not to look him in the eye. "And I, for one, would prefer to never see you again."

***

"I, for one, would prefer to never see you again," Dean mocks as they get in the car. "Man, those two were assholes. Now I remember why I don't play well with other hunters."

"I really spooked them," Sam says quietly, staring ahead into the road. It's just starting to get dark, the sun a thin line of pale pink on the horizon, and the air has gotten cooler, more bearable. "Aren't you, well, worried? Shouldn't we both be?"

"What, about your little mojo display, headache and all? Whatever," Dean shrugs, "bet you can't even do it again."

"Dean, that's not the point," Sam mutters as his brother turns on the headlights, breaking the darkness ahead.

"You're just saying that 'cause you know you can't. Come on, tell me to – make me pull over right now. Tell me to get out of the car, or something. Bet you can't," Dean grins, and turns up the volume on the radio. "Make me change the radio station – come on, Sammy, you hate this song, you shouldn't be forced to listen to it, am I right or am I right?"

"Dean –"

"Let's see, how much louder does this thing go?" Dean says. "Oh, there we are. Come on, Sam, show me special."

"Dean, I'm not gonna try to whammy you into turning the volume down."

"Uh huh. That's 'cause you can't," Dean keeps grinning, fingers drumming out the beat against the steering wheel. "Bitch."

"Jerk," Sam says mechanically, staring at his brother's smirking mouth. He wonders if Dean suspects just how terrified he is right now.

"Pussy," Dean responds, and starts singing along with the chorus of Crazy Train, and Sam closes his eyes, tries to call up how it felt when Isaac stepped back, face contorted with anger and fear.

"Dean, turn that off," he concentrates and tries, looking back at his brother, and then again, and again, and again, but Dean only laughs and keeps singing.

"See, Sammy? Not worried. Hey, do me a favor, get the map from the glove box and see how far we are from Cicero, Indiana, would you?"

"Is there a case?"

"Nah," Dean says, finally turning the volume down. "Something better than a case, man. Lisa."

 

**Cicero, IN**

Between the steady beat of the radio and Dean's progressively specific descriptions of Lisa's impressive flexibility, Sam manages to thumb through the three chapters of Crowley's _Liber Al Vel Legit_, disregarding the author's infamous note to destroy the book after a single reading. The text is as flowery and pompous as he remembers, but still he highlights a sentence here and there before putting the text away and checking his messages. The first voicemail is from Ellen, and he feels only the slightest bit guilty for skipping right through to the next one; it's not that he doesn't care for what she has to say, but he has heard it all before, from Ellen and Bobby both: _ we're here, we care, don't overwork yourself, make sure your brother eats something green once in a while, don't let him drink until the clock is safely in PM territory, same goes for you, Sam, don't worry yourself sick, son._

It's funny, he thinks, because even though they are calling from completely separate phones in different states, their once a day monologues seem to utilize the same script. It's exactly what a normal set of parents would sound like, two-car-garage, empty-nest Mom and Dad with their last baby finally away in college, getting ready for his first spring break.

Once there was a time he would have done anything in his power to get messages just like this one, and now he hits 'erase' after hearing the first couple of words. It's depressing, and Sam puts the phone back in his pocket. Dean seems to have finally finished his paean to claymation and has moved on to extolling the virtues of Daphne from Scooby-Doo, although it's unclear whether he has the Saturday morning or the live-action movie version in mind.

"…Number Nine on Maxim's Hottest Cartoon Babes List," Sam hears from the driver's seat, and reaches dejectedly for a paperback copy of _The Vision and the Voice_, 'Manchester Public Library' stamped red on the inside cover. He doesn't bother highlighting, having a hard enough time concentrating as is, and has to re-read the Cry of the 28th Aethyr twice before the words seem to form coherent enough sentences in his mind.

"No sorrow, save in the darkness of the womb of her by whom came evil," he mutters under his breath, "no sorrow, save in the darkness, could Crowley have been more of a pretentious bastard, of the womb of her, of her, the womb of her by whom came evil… Dean, did you seriously just say something about Cordelia Chase naked? From _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_? That Cordelia?"

"June 2004," Dean repeats smugly, "awesome issue. Playmate of the Year on page 78, the Centerfold's this, heh, Japanese 'lingerie designer', and nine pages of Cordelia freaking Chase on a white fur rug."

"I don't even know what to say to that," Sam sighs, closing _The Vision and the Voice_.

"Harmony is in the November '06 Playboy," his brother supplies cheerfully and pulls over to the curb. "Anyway, Sammy, you know the drill; don't wait up!"

***

He's got his laptop out as he waits for his order, the checkered vinyl tablecloth sticky under his elbows. The ice cubes in his glass hiss softly as they succumb to the thaw, and Sam idly pokes his straw into the lone slice of lemon floating among them, watches it sink slowly to the bottom in a rush of bubbles, then bob back up again.

"Burger and fries, coleslaw on the side, mind if I share?"

It's not his waitress, but someone else entirely that deposits his food onto the table and slides into the opposite seat with a toothy grin.

"Pleasure to see you again, Sam."

"You're the knife girl," he says, staring at her red vinyl jacket. It's almost the same bright shade as the bench seat she's reclining against, although it looks like it'd be much softer to the touch. "Have you been following me?"

"Knife girl, I kind of like that. It's got a ring to it. Are you going to eat those?"

She reaches between the stacks of white packets of sugar and blue packets of Nutra Sweet, pulls up the bottle of ketchup, pops the top and squirts it liberally over his plate.

"It's 'Ruby'," she says, smacking the bottom of the ketchup container with the flat of her hand, "but if you want to keep calling me 'Knife Girl', I'm fine with that. And to answer your question, even though you are being rude and ignoring mine, yes. I've been following you. My questions were, 'can I share' and 'are you going to eat those', by the way."

"Help yourself," he allows; the swirls and eddies of red sauce she's inflicted onto his fries don't look very appetizing.

"You're a sweetheart," she grins again, dipping into the plate, "but just so you know, that's not why I'm so interested in you, Samuel."

There is something off in the way she pronounces his name, almost like she just misspoke and corrected herself halfway through; there is too much of a pause between the syllables, the 'm' is too drawn out, the 'u' barely intelligible.

"Why are you interested in me?" he asks just as she closes her glossy, red mouth over several pieces of deep-fried potato.

"Mhmph," she raises a finger, indicating he needs to wait before she is capable of any sort of answer; Sam can't help watching her chew and swallow, pleasure writ clear across her face. Something about her expression, maybe the bright red of her lipstick, the way she pushes soft blonde curls away from her cheek, or the gusto with which she attacks his lunch reminds him of Jess. It feels like a cold needle-stab between his ribs, a thump in his stomach.

"It's not the height, either – don't get me wrong, I love a tall man," she pronounces, poking a fork into his coleslaw, "but it's the whole Antichrist thing that's really keeping the romance alive."

It doesn't feel like a needle anymore; it's a sharp, cold metallic jab that makes his knuckles go white and frozen over the laptop keys.

"I'm sorry, the what thing?" he asks dumbly as she takes a tentative bite of coleslaw, furrows her brows, and chases it down with another french fry.

"You know, that whole Survivor thing you guys had going in Wyoming that ended with you winning the big prize – what'd you take it in, unmarked bills or precognition and mind control?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," he forces out, eyes quickly scanning the diner for the easiest escape route, but her hand closes over his with a pinch of static electricity.

"You shocked me," Ruby pouts; her fingers are smooth, warm, and not long enough to fully encircle his wrist, although she's giving it a good try. "I'm gonna go out on a limb here, and say that you're thinking of giving me a little bit of truth – your big mean brother already shot the guy who was running that whole operation. But don't bother lying about your head-splitting, mind-numbing, spirit-pounding visions – because I already know those haven't gone away."

"How… how do you know about any of that?"

"Oh, I hear things," she says, finally letting go of his hand. "Hey, I think that's big brother pulling into the parking lot right now. A little ahead of schedule, isn't he? Wonder what that's all about. Anyway, I'm going to skedaddle; you guys go ahead and have yourselves a nice familial chat. We can pick this up later."

She slides out of the booth with a final smile.

"Thank you ever so much for lunch, Sam."

***

"Ok, so, from what I'm seeing on this website here, to get an official copy of someone's birth certificate in this hellhole of a state, you need to be a blood relative, an official caregiver or court appointed guardian, or legal counsel to a," Dean wrinkles his forehead, "to a relevant party. So that's what you're going to need to be. Legal counsel, relevant party, you uh, can come up with a 'reason for the request' yourself; you're the law guy."

"The 'law guy'? Wow, Dean; that is one hell of a brilliant assessment. And all this has something to do with the job you're now saying exists in this town?" Sam asks, pushing the cold, greasy remnants of lunch around his ketchup-smeared plate.

"Sorta," Dean grunts between frantic gulps of coffee, and doesn't say anything for the next five minutes. The waitress's giving them odd looks by the time he starts again; Sam thinks he would be, too, were he in her place, because he's been here for over two hours and entertained as many visitors in the meantime.

"Look, Sammy," his brother says finally, pressing the laptop shut, "I really need you to do this for me. It's important. What do you want me to say, 'please'? 'Pretty please, cherry on top'?"

"No, I don't want you to say 'pretty please'. I want a straight answer. What does this really have to do with? Is it for that woman? Is this some kind of messed up hoop-jumping thing?"

"No," Dean says, examining the dried-on patterns of soda and grease all over the crinkly tablecloth.

"Then what is it? What is going on?"

"Fine; fucking fine, let's go. Get up, go get in the car. I'll take care of the check."

"That's it?" he asks incredulously. "That's all you have to say to me now?"

"No, Sammy, that's not _all I have to say to you now_," his brother grits out, scrabbling for his coffee cup, and it suddenly strikes Sam that Dean's hands are shaking. It's just a slight twitch, probably not something he would have even picked up on had he not been looking right at him this very moment, but it's enough to make him look up at Dean's face and wince.

"Just get in the car. I'll tell you where to drive," Dean sighs, still wrinkling his pale, clammy forehead; wordlessly, Sam picks up the keys and the laptop and makes his way into the parking lot.

Dean gives him directions in a quiet monotone, puts the coins in the meter one by one, listening to them clink inside. The afternoon sunlight filters lazily through the treetops, splashes across the neatly trimmed grass and the park benches, each painted a bright rainbow hue.

"Look," Dean says, as they sit on the blue one near a gravel path, and Sam watches a short, skinny girl trying desperately to hold on to two large tawny mutts, a pair of kids tossing a Frisbee back and forth. There's a grey-haired man on the purple bench, reading a newspaper through thick, tortoise shell-framed glasses.

"At what?" he asks finally, stretching his legs into the gravel. The bench is uncomfortably low to the ground, and the wood is uneven and too dense against his back. The sun ducks back behind a large white mass Sam thinks looks like a ship, at least until the wind tangles its sails and brings its masts crashing down.

They are sitting too close together, he realizes as Dean's thigh presses against his, hot and shivering – Dean is twitching his foot, kicking up little bits of gravel with his leather and steel-encased toes. Sam cocks his head, trying to gauge what it is that his brother sees, decides that suddenly putting more bench space between them would be the wrong thing to do.

The Frisbee arcs through the air gracelessly, landing far across the lawn and almost into another cluster of boys. One of them picks it up, takes a few steps forward and launches it back to the grateful owners. The leg against Sam goes stock-still, presses into him harder.

"It's not a job; it's him. His name is Ben and he just turned eight yesterday," Dean explains, and it's as if some floodgate has suddenly come crashing down in his head, because he doesn't stop talking until Sam's heard everything; the things the kid likes, the music, the clothes, the way he walks and talks, the way the neighborhood women whispered behind Dean's back.

"God, but you're an idiot," Sam sighs after Dean's finally paused for a breath. He thinks he ought to be more surprised at the whole situation, or bothered, disturbed. Certainly, he is expected to be sympathetic, not vacillating between wanting to cry, laugh, ruffle his brother's hair or smack him on his fool head. Maybe do all of the above in rapid succession.

"I know how you felt about school, but did you pay any attention in biology at all? I mean, the birds and the bees part seems like it would have been worth it to you for the laugh factor, or something. Do you seriously think musical tastes and the shirts an eight-year-old kid wears have anything to do with genetics? You said it yourself, his mom had a type; you think maybe it's had some influence on how she is raising her son? You are such an idiot, Dean," he repeats almost fondly, waits for his brother to turn towards him, metaphorical guns blazing; Dean doesn't disappoint.

For a few moments, it's like being fifteen again, and science mid-terms only weeks away. Sam runs through the basic points of Lamarckian evolution, nature versus nurture, Gregor Mendel and Darwin's "The Origin of Species", while Dean scowls, kicks at his seat and remains woefully unconvinced.

"Wait, did she – Lisa – say something to you?" Sam relents finally, and Dean shrugs, shaking his head.

"She was evasive," he says, "and I wasn't about to come out with a 'so, cute kid, any chance he's mine?' I _need_ to know, Sammy, ok? I need to know for sure, and I can't think of any way to do it without being a complete jackass, and –"

"Ok," Sam nods, moving to his half of the bench, the side of his leg feeling the sudden parting cold. "Department of Health's in Indianapolis, right? That's about an hour-long drive." He looks at his watch, considering. "Come on, I'll drop you back off at the motel room."

***

It's mid-afternoon, and the traffic on Interstate 70 is a myriad of car horns squealing their displeasure into the winding eight-lane horizon. Sam glares at his watch for the sixth time, belatedly wishing he'd checked the Health Department's business hours, loosens his tie, pops the top button of his dress shirt. It could stand to be cleaner; he hasn't washed it since the last time they posed as agents acting on pressing, official business. He hasn't come up with his lines yet, either, hoping something will come to him on the spot. He has no idea how long something like this will take, doubts it's going to be a "here you go, Sir, have a print-out" kind of situation. He'll probably have to ask them to send the paperwork to their PO box in Lawrence, and Lawrence means Missouri and ashes and the smell of smoke, and his dress shoes are too tight, his collar is chafing, and damn him for giving in and agreeing to do this, damn Dean for wanting a second go with Lisa fucking Braeden, damn Dean for ever having fucked her in the first place.

Sam flicks his eyes between mirrors in a futile attempt to change lanes, stomps onto the brakes with a curse.

He laughed it off back in the park, sure; quoted Wikipedia and tenth-grade bio and nodded and smiled, but alone in the car, he admits he isn't anywhere as sure as he'd like his brother to believe he is. A fucking kid, imagine that; then again, with Dean, it's a wonder it hasn't happened before now. How many towns, how many states, how many beds has he passed through this year alone; then again, with Dean, that's practically a rhetorical question. And now it's Sam who is wasting the afternoon in the middle of a crowded highway, thinking of dominant traits and probabilities, pondering chromosome pairs and whether or not this Lisa woman let Dean fuck her again before he found out she was a mother.

He is so engrossed that he almost misses his exit and forgets to feed the meter as he parks the car.

***

A familiar voice calls his name as he briskly walks down the sidewalk, and a moment later, a small, manicured hand is tapping him on the arm.

"Fancy seeing you here, Sam," Ruby smiles, matching his pace. "Where'd you leave the hero of the day, in the car, or back in Cicero? I would've thought this was important enough for him to come with."

"What is your deal?" he asks her, eyeing the building numbers on both sides of the street. "You show up wherever I am, know exactly what I'm doing and why – hell, you seem to know more about my family than I do."

"Does it really matter?" she asks, threading her arm through his. She is tall enough to do it comfortably, and that startles Sam enough to not immediately pull away.

"Just tell me who you are and what you want," he snaps, and she grips his sleeve a little tighter.

"I'm here to help you, Sam, if you'd just let me."

"Help me with what?"

"Oh, you know. Issues, problems, the occasional dinner," she winks conspiratorially. "I have a list. Bullet point the first – those pesky visions of yours; bullet point the second –"

"Tell me how you know about those," he says, pulling her in a little closer. "I want a straight answer, none of that coy 'I hear things' bullshit. I really don't have the patience for that right now."

"Oh, I bet you don't," Ruby smirks, tossing her hair back. She is wearing the same jacket she did earlier, and her lips are still painted a brilliant red to match it. "Promise you won't freak out, and I'll show you something."

"Alright," he nods, letting her guide him towards a shop front, out of the way of the stream of pedestrians flowing on by.

"Remember, we're in public," she breathes, rising up on tip toe, her free hand wrapping around Sam's chin. She smells like some kind of flowery perfume, and her hair glints pale gold in the sunlight, soft careless waves around her blushing face. "Don't make a scene," she whispers, full, red mouth close enough to kiss, eyes blinking closed. When she opens them again, they are pupil-less, demon-black.

Sam's hand is going for the flask in his pocket before he's even conscious of the movement, but Ruby's grip on him is unnaturally tight.

"You promised not to make a scene. Come on; is that any way to treat a girl? Holy water?" the demon asks, the inky blackness receding from her eyes. "As I said, I'm here to help you, Sam. If I was here for any other reason, you'd know it by now, believe me."

"Is this some kind of joke?" Inside his coat pocket, Sam's hand finally closes around the little flask, and he wonders if he can screw open the cap fast enough.

"No joke. I want to help."

"What," he sighs, "what kind of help could I possibly want from you?"

The girl's mouth stretches into a smile again, and Sam notices dumbly that her lipstick is slightly smudged on the left side of her bottom lip as the demon leans away from him to reach into a faux leather pocket.

"I can help you save your brother," it says, handing him a small, sealed envelope. "Here. This isn't much, but I hope you accept it as a down payment, and a token of my good will."

Sam rips the envelope open clumsily, pulls out the paper inside. The word "copy" is watermarked through the middle of it in large, pastel letters.

"Indiana Department of Health, Division of Vital Statistics, Certificate of Live Birth," he reads aloud, random words leaping out at him from the typewritten lines. "Twin Oaks Hospital, Name of mother – Lisa Jean Braeden, date of birth, sex of child – male; name of father…"

"You don't have to say it if you don't want to," Ruby says, still smiling, "but a 'thank you' would be really nice."

"Uh, ok," Sam nods, reading the father's name over and over, thick, happy warmth radiating steadily through his ribcage. "Edward Gregory Tyler, Jr. Legal residence – Indianapolis, IN. Age at time of birth – thirty one."

***

His phone rings on the way back to the car, Bobby's number glowing on the display; Sam hesitantly swipes his fingers over the "talk" button.

"Got something on Melchiresa for ya, Sam," Bobby says hoarsely; a dog barks somewhere in the background, and he can hear the clinking of pots and pans, water running in the sink.

"A couple of things. There is a text dating back to the second century, talkin' about the death of the demon Rameel. From what I gather, it's always been regarded as an account of the events that led up to the Great Flood. A war fought by two of Rameel's children for the right to rule over humankind. Rameel'd favored one over the other, but the scrolls aren't too clear on which one, only ever name one of them, Melchiresa, who is 'struck down and damned without salvation'," Bobby quotes. "I did some cross-checking, and 'struck down' is always interpreted as being done by God, but I ain't so sure that that's right." Bobby pauses, coughing.

"You alright?" Sam asks, listening to Bobby's wheezing.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine," Bobby grouses. "Ellen's got me drinking some herbal nonsense, swears there ain't no cold it won't cure. As I was sayin', I cross-checked with the _Book of Enoch_ and the _Journals of Rabbi Eliezer_, both of which number Rameel's children in the hundreds. Hard to say who the second one is. But what really bugs me is some of the phrasing. I've been looking at everything I could find on Rameel and his progeny for the past few days, and the more I look, the less convinced I am that all the texts describe something that has already come to pass."

"You think it's a prediction, then? A prophecy?"

"Maybe," Bobby coughs again. "I'll send you my notes, and you can check out the sources yourself, if you want. Oh, if you're going to look on your own, let me tell you the other names Rameel is frequently referred to by. Got a pen?"

"Yeah," Sam says, pulling out a notepad and pencil. "Go ahead."

"Gadriel's not a very big one, doesn't come up in a lot of sources, but it does come up. Same with the names Beliar, Bel and Belial. Some medieval texts, like the _Key of Solomon_, maintain that Belial is a different demon altogether, but a few of the older ones give Belial, Rameel, Gadriel and Azazel as different names for the same entity. Sometimes they use the name Samael, too, but there's some conflicting sources on that one. He either comes up as one of Azazel's children, or Azazel himself. Don't make no kinda sense, really, but I'd give them all a try."

"Ok," he nods, scribbling the names down. "You said you had something else, too?"

"Yeah, I do. It's about your brother. Don't get too excited about it, but there's a woman you might want to go see in New York. She ain't a hunter, but she knows her way around, knows a lot of useful folks, too. Don't even think about tellin' her who you are, come up with a story and stick to it. Bela won't do a thing for you without a price tag attached, and the more she knows about you, the more she'll ask for, you got it?"

"Yeah, I got it, Bobby. Thank you."

"As I said, don't get too excited about it," Bobby repeats. "And get your brother to lighten up on the cheeseburgers, would you?"

"I'm trying," Sam sighs, "Bobby, I –"

He thinks about telling Bobby about Ruby, but he is pretty sure what will happen if he does; Bobby will worry and Bobby will yell, and he will put his sick self right in his car and come all the way out here and maybe yell some more, and Dean will join in the yelling and – no. Best not to even bring it up before he knows more about her; Sam settles for another question, instead.

"Have you had any luck with the Colt?"

Bobby coughs again, and Sam can hear his teeth clicking against a cup as he gulps something down, followed by a disgusted "ugh". Ellen's voice carries through lightly, something about adding some more honey to the mixture, and he can't help but chuckle.

"No," Bobby says finally, "I haven't figured out what makes it tick yet, but I'm workin' on it."

Sam hangs up with a "take care of yourself," takes a minute to stare at the names he scribbled onto his notepad; he seems to have double-underlined "Azazel" without really thinking about it.

***

There is a short guy in a dark blue uniform examining the meter next to his parking spot, and Sam swears softly under his breath.

"I was just about to leave," he says, coming closer, but the meter attendant purses his lips sourly and begins to fill out the ticket pad; that's just the perfect damn thing Sam needs to round out his day. The Impala is conspicuous even at its law-abiding best; a parking ticket wouldn't necessarily put them on the radar if they switch plates again, but still, it's really pushing it. He mentally berates himself for his carelessness as he watches the guy shake his pen, then swap it out for another one from his breast pocket, and makes a spontaneous decision. It's crazy, it's kind of wrong, and there is no guarantee at all that it will work, but Sam does his damnedest to concentrate through the immediate pressure in the back of his head, and when he speaks, he knows he isn't saying ordinary words.

_"Don't write that ticket,"_ he says, enunciating carefully as he stares straight into the parking officer's irritated face. _"Please, don't write that ticket."_

It's a little disturbing to watch the guy's brown eyes turn glassy and his face go slack; it's also a little exciting. For a moment or two, the parking officer just stands there, ticket book clutched in his hands, pen poised over the page, head shaking slightly.

_Come on, come on,_ Sam thinks anxiously, _put it away,_ heart pounding in his throat, and the parking officer lifts a slow, clumsy arm and shoves the pen back into his pocket, the ticket book back into a bag at his waist.

"You have a good day, Sir," he nods awkwardly. "Drive safe!"

Sam does.

***

The TV in their motel room is set on the Discovery channel, a well-bred voice talking over a screen of endlessly running lions. Dean is sprawled out on Sam's bed, Sam's pillow under his chin, and although he doesn't say anything as the door opens, the look on his face is pretty clear on the fact that he hasn't been watching so much as he has been waiting for Sam to return, keeping count of passing minutes by the number of antelope the narrator gleefully claims have fallen to the lions' teeth. Sam doesn't have any desire to prolong the wait; he pulls the envelope out as he sheds his suit jacket, sets it on the bedspread and retreats to the bathroom with a change of clothes. When he comes out a few minutes later, wearing a fresh t-shirt and toweling his hair dry, the lions have been replaced by polar bears, the envelope has vanished, and Dean is still maintaining the same pose, socked feet almost touching Sam's headboard.

"Did you read it?" Dean asks, staring at the bears as if they hold the answers to all of life's pressing challenges.

"Yeah, I read it," Sam nods, sitting down as the perky narrator divulges that polar bears are considered a vulnerable species by the World Conservation Union, and will likely see their numbers reduced by as much as two thirds by the year 2050 if action isn't taken. "Guess you're off the hook." He regards Dean for a long, empty minute, waits for him to say something that never comes. "You alright, dude? I swear, you look kind of disappointed."

Dean shrugs, presses the mute button as the television cuts to commercial, lightly punches Sam's pillow into a more comfortable shape.

"Bobby called," Sam says, trying to fill the silence. "There is a case in New York. Um, some woman Bobby knows, she is having trouble with – she is –"

"You are a shitty liar, Sam," Dean mutters into the pillow. "You're going to need to get a lot better than that. And right now you're sitting there making that face – yeah, that's the one – about to tell me another one about 'some woman Bobby knows'. This woman – whoever she is – forget it. She can't help me."

"You don't know that. Dean, you've got to let me try."

"I don't gotta do anything. Forget it; we're not going."

With the commercial break over, the narrator resumes reciting polar bear statistics, hunting, feeding and mating habits, and Dean turns the volume up with a determined expression, tugs on Sam's blanket until he has enough to cover himself. He stretches and yawns, pulling the blanket up; it's enough to blow Sam's nascent irritation into bright, solid anger.

"You know what?" he grits out, coming over to sit on the bed next to his brother. "I've had it. I've been busting my ass trying to keep you alive, and you act like you couldn't care less. What is it with you? Do you have some kind of fucked up death wish? Please, enlighten me, because I don't think I can take too much more of this crap."

Dean points the remote at the screen one more time, flicks the set off with a click and a hiss.

"What do you want from me, Sam?" he sighs, lifting his face up from the pillow.

"I just want you to take this seriously," Sam says, a little calmer now, but it doesn't last.

"It's good to want things; it builds character," Dean pronounces, punctuating the sentence with another satisfied yawn, and Sam thanks every power in the universe for not having the remote within reach, or it would be bouncing off of his brother's head in the next second. He settles for a tired, "You're unbelievable," watches Dean's satisfied nod.

"Very true. Look, Sam, I get it. I do. But you need to stop trying to 'help' me, or I'm going to have to do it for you. Stop looking at me like that. There is no way out of this deal, not for me. If I try to get out of it in any way, you die. Ok? You die. Those are the terms, that's how it is, and the sooner you accept it, the easier things will be. I got one year left, and I want to make the most of it. If you really want to help, go make a beer run. And don't get any of that fruity shit, like last time, what was it, Pete's 'Strawberry Blond'? What the hell kind of name for a beer is Strawberry Blond, anyway?"

Sam grits his teeth, slowly counts to ten in his mind, wondering if maybe it would be worth the headache and the likely resulting fistfight to lay the suggestion on Dean –_ we're going to New York, and that's final_.

"The woman in New York really does have a case, Dean," he ends up saying, "and I am not going to let down a friend of Bobby's just because you're so intent on being a jerk. And Bobby had some other stuff to say, too. You remember what that demon in Chicago said to us about Melchiresa? Bobby figured it out – it's some sort of old demon, mentioned in all kinds of books – Enochian texts, the Dead Sea scrolls; the works. That possessed kid in Illinois asked if I was working with it. And you remember what –"

"How long have we been doing this?" Dean asks, rolling over onto his back.

"Doing what, having a pointless fucking argument?"

"Hunting, dumb-ass. Between the two of us, and Bobby, and," Dean's voice hitches a little, "Dad, how many of these things have we faced down? Double digits, dude, and you still can't seem to wrap your freak brain around one simple fact: demons lie. They mess with your head, get you all hot and bothered until you can't think straight and go off and do something stupid. So this demon's got a name; big deal. It's gonna end up just as exorcised as it would have without us being formally introduced. You going to get beer, or what?"

"Or what, Dean," Sam sighs. "Why are you getting all comfortable on my bed, anyway?"

"My mattress squeaks. Can't so much as blink without the springs screaming bloody murder."

"Great. I wasn't done yet, by the way. You remember that blond girl from Lincoln?"

"What, the one that totally stole your thunder, you child prodigy, you?"

"Not funny. I think she's the demon I have Bobby researching. Melchiresa. And if she isn't, then I don't know what her deal is. She caught up with me over breakfast this morning, introduced herself as 'Ruby', showed me just how possessed she was, and offered her help."

"No shit. Now that you mention it, that is kind of disturbing. Help with what?"

"Beats me; we need to get that gun working. I'm thinking once we're done with the case in New York, I'll hit the library. Maybe we'll get lucky and I'll figure out what it is we're missing."

"Yeah, alright, alright, we'll go," Dean grumbles, getting up to go to the bathroom. Sam takes the opportunity to reclaim his bed, stretches out under the thin, cheap covers. His pillow is still indented into the shape of Dean's face, and he lays his cheek down into the warm groove, full of the quickly fading scent of his brother's hair gel. It's not until later, trying his damnedest to ignore the near constant creaking of springs coming from his brother's bed that he realizes he didn't tell Dean about the parking enforcer.

 

**New York, NY**

"Ms. Talbot? I'm Darren Henley, and this is my associate, Ian Fraser. I called earlier," Sam says, the words far too familiar in his mouth. He's spoken to her three times now, while Dean was out; she didn't ask why he needed the information he needed, merely listened as he spun his cover story, a client who made an unfortunate trade with a demon and wanted to renegotiate the terms.

"A demon," she scoffed into the receiver. "So, your client summoned a demon to do a task for him, and hired you to help him avoid paying up? Would rather buy a miracle, spend cash money, than honor whatever compact he blundered into? Let me guess, maybe he said 'I wish', never thought it was believable enough to be real, not until whatever it was he wished for dropped out of the sky and landed at his feet?"

"It wasn't like that," he told her, gripping the phone tight, but she only sighed.

"You must be pretty new to the trade, Mr. Henley. I've dealt with nineteen people over the past two years alone, all done as I just described. Spilling out their worries to a stranger at the bar, on the bus, what have you. Next thing they know, that raise is in the bag, the wife looks ten years younger, and the neighbor's house burns down. On the bright side, I do know a fellow who has experience with cases like this. No guarantees he'll be able to help, but I'll get a hold of him and put you in touch.

"What will that cost?"

"Let me get back to you, Mr. Henley," she'd said, called back within the hour with the terms. "There's an item I need procured. Be here Tuesday at three o'clock sharp."

***

Bela Talbot isn't a short woman, but she still only comes up to Sam's chin as she ushers them in. She bypasses the overstuffed armchairs, candles and Celtic knot tapestries, and leads them into a small, no-nonsense back office, instead. There are stacks of newspapers on a rack in the corner, three desktop computers and a laptop running endless strings of spreadsheets, a television tuned to MSNBC with the sound off. It looks more like the office of an accountant or a lawyer than a fortune-teller or an expert on the supernatural.

A sleek Siamese cat cocks its head at them as they enter, but doesn't move from its perch on top of a filing cabinet.

"Have a seat, Mr. Henley, Mr. Fraser," she says, staring at Sam. "I figure there is no need to bother with the usual hand-waving and incense routine, since you're in the business. Let's get right down to what you're here for."

She leans over to one of the desks and clicks the mouse button, angles the screen towards them.

"The Hand of Glory, recently procured by the New York Historical Society. Not the safest thing to have on the premises, as you might imagine, considering it's haunted by the original owner. I thought we could go in for it tonight; they are holding a charity function, and I've got tickets."

Sam sneaks a glance over at Dean; they covered this on the phone, _my associate is on a strictly need-to-know basis_. Bela is about to say she needs their help retrieving the hand, but can manage to dispose of it herself. The idea of letting this woman hang on to a haunted artifact that's rumored to unlock any door or render one's enemies motionless with a few additional preparations galls him, but it's the price she's set for putting Sam in touch with the man she knows, someone with knowledge of deals and wishes. If this helps Dean, he decides, everything else is irrelevant.

Dean's staring at the computer screen, where the Hand of Glory slide has faded into the next one, a small rabbit's foot on a glittering chain.

"What's that," he laughs, "a haunted keychain?"

Bela Talbot curls her lip.

"It's not all that funny, actually. There was once a very foolish human who had the nerve to ask the Fae for help in a business deal. He got the help, alright, that rabbit's foot. It's cursed. The effect is instant as soon as you touch the damn thing – gives you the devil's own luck as long as you have it on your person. Once you lose it, all that luck turns right around… it's not pretty. Curses hardly ever are, but anything that deals with luck is especially serious," she sighs, gives the television set a quick glance. "He didn't make it."

"So he lost the foot."

"Everybody loses it," Bela nods, "or so the lore says. I tried to track it down, of course, but someone else got there before me. I think it must have been someone who knew what he'd come across, because I haven't heard 'boo' about it since."

She flicks the television to another channel, puts on the closed captions, and Sam watches them sliding up the screen for a moment, confused.

"Is that… is it that show where the host and crew travel around the country, appraising the junk people have in their attics?"

"_Antiques Roadshow_," she agrees. "You would be surprised what some clueless people hang on to. If the cufflink that fellow is talking about right now is the real deal, it is worth far more than the five hundred they're suggesting. By the way, you can't go to the Historical Society dressed like that. I don't suppose either one of you has a decent suit in your luggage?"

They end up renting tuxes from a place Bela suggests; she gives them a quick once-over, and tells Sam his bow-tie technique needs work.

"That's much better," she says with an appraising look once he gives it two more tries. "Well, gentlemen, are you ready to go?"

* * *

Sam is surprised by how smoothly everything goes; the Hand is in their possession in less than two hours, and they make staggered exits, agreed upon ahead of time, to draw less attention to themselves.

"Give me two days, three, tops, Mr. Henley," Bela tells him before they part ways. "Thank you for a lovely night."

Dean isn't there when he gets back to the room; he comes in about a half an hour later, flushed and grinning, whistling cheerfully to himself.

"Bobby called," he announces, undoing his tie and tossing his jacket and keys onto the bed. "Something about demonic omens in Ohio, dry lightning, barometric pressure drop, some guy blowing his head off in a church in front of a whole congregation, another shooting up a hobby shop. I said we'd check it out."

***

The following morning, he wakes to the sound of Dean's laughter, and rubs at his eyes before turning towards the other bed. Dean's got the phone pressed between shoulder and cheek, the motel notepad in one hand, juggling a pen and his cup of coffee with the other.

"Yeah?" he queries the phone with a chuckle, scribbles something down on the paper, "hey, gimme a sec." He points at the table, mouthing "coffee" at Sam, then laughs again as he changes ears.

"My brother," he tells the person on the other end, "yeah, I know. Who, Naomi? I don't think she likes me very much. Nah, don't worry about it. Yeah. Mm, yeah._ Yeah_."

The third "yeah" comes out low and gravelly, accompanied by a sly, inviting smirk on Dean's face; it resonates unpleasantly in Sam's chest. He takes a quick, large gulp of coffee and represses the urge to tell his brother that his come-hither stare is wasted on the girl who can't see him.

"Can't wait," Dean says in the same unmistakable tone, and Sam swallows awkwardly, the coffee too hot and sweet on his tongue.

Finally, Dean slides the phone into his pocket and stands, stretching noisily. His t-shirt rides up above his tanned stomach, trailing over freckles and ribs; Sam takes another swallow and looks away, feels the swoosh of air as Dean moves past him to grab his duffel.

"Change of plans, Sammy," he announces, rifling through shirts and jeans, holds up a flannel, frowns and shoves it back in the bag. "We're taking a slight detour through Belvedere."

"What's in Belvedere?" Sam asks as expected, although he is sure he already knows the answer.

"Shannon," Dean grins, carefully examining another shirt; it seems to pass the test, because Dean tosses it onto the bed and sniffs at a pant leg with a frown.

"Need to get some goddamn laundry done while we're at it. It's your turn this week."

"Shannon," Sam mutters under his breath, "because it went _so well_ with Lisa."

"Shannon invited me. There's a party," Dean snaps, zipping up his bag.

 

**Belvedere, OH**

It's evening by the time they cross over the Belvedere town line, and Dean's out the door as soon as they've secured the keys to a motel room.

"Don't wait up, Sammy," he throws quickly over his shoulder; he doesn't take the car, and Sam uses it to ferry their bags to the Laundromat down the road. He briefly entertains the thought of washing only his own stuff, leaving Dean's clothes just as they are, but the argument that would undoubtedly follow would not be worth it.

He picks through Dean's things slowly; he has all night and the laundry never closes. He holds his breath, nostrils full of the sweaty-stale scent that condemns the shirts to the heavy duty washing machine. One of Dean's shirts and two of his are flecked with dark rusty stains, and he puts quarters into the dispenser and watches a little foil packet of stain remover tumble down. He slides his fingers softly over the worn-in green of the shirt, one of Dean's favorites, rests his thumb over the larger stain, scratches at it with a fingernail. When he takes his hand away, there are specks of brown under the nail; his brother's blood, a little piece of him stuck against Sam's skin. He lifts the finger to his mouth and chews, trimming the nail short and jagged, wonders if the salt on his tongue is a taste of Dean, a taste that some girl named Shannon is becoming privy to at this very moment.

After five minutes – guaranteed to work, or your money back – the shirt joins the rest of their darks in the cold water; Sam presses buttons and handles, and settles back in a chair to watch the blots of color and foam spin against the glass.

He organizes his notes on the laptop as he runs the dryers; Bela Talbot had definitely been onto something with her keywords and databases. He considers calling her, but doubts that they will exchange more than the barely polite "I tried, I'm sorry" and "It's ok, I'll figure something out, thanks so much for your time." Tomorrow, he decides, he'll do it tomorrow, in sunlight, not the artificial glow of fluorescents fighting a losing battle against the night. He checks a dryer and adds more minutes, pulls a handful of socks out of another, sets to separating the pairs. That's how Ruby finds him, rolling his and Dean's socks into neat little bundles on the counter.

"Laundry duty," she says, sucking on a straw, "how… demeaning." There is a McDonald's bag in her hands and she slurps loudly at a plastic cup with a coffee shop logo on the side. "These iced caramel latte things? Better than orgasms. It's like, I dunno, Rapture in a cup. Want a taste?"

"I don't imagine the Rapture treating you very well," Sam sighs as she plops down next to him and spreads her food over the laundry table.

"In my father's house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you," she pronounces, "what is that, the Gospel of John?"

She pours ketchup liberally on the scrap of foil that serves as her plate, and dips a french-fry in.

"Mmmm. You sure you don't want any? I got it super-sized. Behold, I tell you a mystery: we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed – in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. When this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: Death is swallowed up in victory. Really, I think there's something to it."

"You're misquoting Corinthians. 'For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality'."

Ruby snorts, reaching for another french-fry. "Pshaw. Incorruption, is that even a word? I ask you, what do they put in these things?"

"More sugar in the fall, less sugar in the summer, to keep the taste consistent," Sam tells her as the dryer beeps, done.

"Sugar, huh. I could eat, like, a mountain of these. What's that really big one, Everest?"

"What do you want?" he asks tiredly as he empties the dryer into a cart, starts to fold into neat stacks, his pants, his shirts, Dean's shirts, Dean's jeans.

"These your brother's?" Ruby pulls a pair of black boxer briefs out of the cart, waves them in the air. "Man's got taste. Where is he, anyway?"

Sam takes them, warm from the dryer and her hands, folds them slowly before depositing them into the Dean pile.

"Out somewhere, I don't know. I'm –"

"Not your brother's keeper? That's cute, but also grossly inaccurate. No worries, I know exactly where he is. Matter of fact, I –"

"_Tell me what you want_," Sam snaps, lacing his words with the compulsion, but Ruby only laughs, shoving the last of the fries into her mouth.

"A swing and a miss. Need to practice more, Sam, my man; that just didn't do it for me. Hey, no problem. I know how busy you are, what with all those nasty demons needing a nudge back into the abyss. So, why don't you go ahead and finish up here, and I'll tell you how I'm going to help you out today."

Clenching his teeth, Sam tamps the dry, folded clothes down into appropriate bags, does up the zippers and shoves one into Ruby's hands.

"You can help me by carrying that out to the car. Let's go."

"Your pal Bobby, he making any progress with that gun?" she asks, settling into the passenger seat. It galls Sam to let her into the car, but there is no way he is having this conversation with her surrounded by washers, laundry carts and laundry patrons.

"No," he admits honestly, and Ruby nods, runs her hand lightly over the dashboard.

"That's what I thought. I can fix that. You want that weapon to do some real damage again, don't you? I think it's time for me to pay Singer Salvage a visit, Sam."

"If you so much as touch him," Sam hisses, nearly running a stop sign, "by the time I'm done with you, you will be begging me to send you back to hell, I promise."

"Wow," she says with a little smile, "that was good. Misdirected, but very impressive, all the same. Still, why don't you get it through your head, I'm not Melchiresa. I have your best interests in mind."

"What did you say?"

"I have your best interests in mind?" she repeats coyly.

"No. You said 'I'm not Melchiresa'. You know what that's all about, so _tell me_," Sam forces the words through his lips, focuses everything he's got into the whammy, and for one small, perfect moment, Ruby's face goes slack, eyes blank and dull.

"Ooh. I thought you'd never ask, Sammy," she nearly purrs, recovering, as the car screeches into the motel lot.

He herds Ruby into the room, one hand clutching at the straps of the duffel, the other feeling for the gun at his hip.

"Talk," he says as she deposits the other bag on Dean's bed. She climbs up onto the covers and sits cross-legged without bothering to take off her boots. They're black and shiny, long pointed toes and tall spike heels leaving smudges of dirt on the blanket. Sam wonders if he ought to say something, but elects not to, sits down on his own bed across the narrow aisle.

"So?"

"Buttons," Ruby nods. "Ok, ok! I'm talking, I'm talking. Hey, if you don't stop making that face, it'll freeze that way."

She uncrosses her legs and leans back, using the duffel bag as a makeshift headrest.

"Melchiresa really hates you, you know. Don't get me wrong, there are very few things in this world that she doesn't hate, but she hates you and Dean something special."

"Care to elaborate on her reasons?" Sam prompts, undoing the straps of his holster and setting the gun on the nightstand.

"Well, to be fair, I doubt you like her very much, either. But, let's see; between you and your brother, you've exorcised her twice, got her own daevas to throw her out of a twelfth story window, got her in real big trouble with daddy… yeah, I'd say she's got plenty of reasons."

"Meg? She is one of the demons that got out of the gate?"

Ruby pulls a tube of gloss out of her pocket, slides it over her mouth and presses her lips together, blotting the color.

"Well, it's hell down there. Can you blame her? This is probably information your brother should hear sooner, rather than later. 25 Calumet Road. Don't give me the perplexed glare; that's where Dean's partying tonight. Anyway, I'm gonna go. I've got to see a man about a gun, right?"

"The Colt," Sam says, tracing his fingers over the worn leather of his shoulder holster. "Remember, if anything happens to Bobby –"

"You'll grind my bones to make your bread. Good night, Sam," she says with a wet, glistening smile.

***

The door at 25 Calumet Road opens to Pink Floyd and the thick smell of incense. A short girl, hair dyed a bright neon blue, motions Sam in without so much as a greeting or a name, and he slides past her and looks around. The entrance hall is dark, but he can see into the flickering living room beyond, where a television plays cartoons with the sound down and garlands of Christmas lights wrap around the ceiling.

"Shannon?" he asks as she shuts the door behind him, but the girl shakes her head with a snort.

"Damn, did Shannon win the lottery or something? You can put your jacket on the counter over there," she points to a sizeable pile of outerwear topped off with someone's backpack and a small leather purse.

"Hey, is that Carl? About time he got here," calls a voice from the living room. "Carl, man, tell me you brought your guitar." A thin, scruffy blond man peeks out into the hall, cigarette in hand, looks Sam up and down as he inhales. "You're fucking tall. And you're not Carl."

"No," Sam starts, "I'm Sam. I'm actually looking for –"

"He's here to see Shannon," the girl supplies, and the man laughs, ashes his cigarette into an empty beer bottle.

"Wow. Take a number, I guess," he smirks, "Shannon's _entertaining_ at the moment, so you can, uh, well – Naomi, help me out here," he says, taking another drag.

"Here, have a Corona," blue-haired Naomi shoves a bottle into Sam's hands, "we're out of limes, though, and what Dave's trying to say is that Shannon's getting fucked by some asshole right now, so you're shit out of luck unless you want sloppy seconds."

"Uh," Sam says, hand closing around the cold glass, "uh –"

"Awkward!" Dave giggles, stubbing his cigarette out. "Jesus, Naomi, I could've said it like that myself; I was kind of going for the tact thing – you know, breaking it gently? Don't know that I'd call the guy an asshole, either, but anyway, there you have it."

"Trust me, Dean's an asshole," Naomi nods sagely, taking a sip of her own beer. "Ugh, it's just not the same without the lime. Maybe we could send Carl to the Food Bag when he gets here; think he'd go? Seriously, Shannon has terrible taste in men."

"Whatever. Dean's hot," says Dave.

"Dean's my brother," Sam interjects, feeling a hot blush creeping up his cheeks, "I'm actually here for him; I've never even met Shannon."

"Now that's really awkward," Dave gets out, but he is still smiling, although Naomi's not.

"I stand by what I said," she announces. "I'm going to go mingle now. This has already taken up more of my time than I'd care to count." She walks back into the living room, and Sam can hear her telling someone else about the woes of Corona without citrus.

"Sorry about that," Dave offers, "ignore Naomi, she's been pissy all day. Anyway, Sam, you're welcome to hang out. Oh, that must be Carl, finally," he adds, as an engine rumbles to a halt outside.

Sitting on the couch between Dave, a woman named Larissa, and the non-punctual Carl, Sam pretends to watch the television as he counts down the minutes. Finally, a door bangs somewhere in the depths of the house, followed by unsteady footsteps and what is unmistakably Dean's laugh over the low thrum of the music.

"Hey, grab me a beer," a muffled voice calls; Sam hears Dean reply, "Hey, grab it yourself," but he sounds more amused than annoyed. The door slams again, followed by more footsteps and laughter, and Dean stumbles out into the living room, rumpled, sweaty and looking extremely pleased with himself. He's wearing nothing aside from his jeans, belt hanging from the loops undone; as he aims towards the kitchen, Sam sees a fresh scratch on his shoulder, a thick, red mark in the hollow of his throat, and swallows uneasily. Dean hasn't noticed him, and Sam is about to stand and make his presence known when a pair of arms wrap around Dean's waist from behind, and a pointed chin rests possessively on Dean's shoulder.

"Can't walk like this, dude," Dean says, turning around with an indulgent smile, "no walking, no beer."

"Beer can wait," is the reply, and Sam stares, transfixed, as the guy leans in, brushing messy brown hair out of his eyes, and presses his mouth to Dean's. He is vaguely aware that his couch-mates are looking at him, wonders if this is Dave's cue to chime in with another "awkward", because there is nothing not awkward about his heart pounding in the trap of his ribcage, the bitter saliva filling his mouth, the large hand splayed over Dean's bare back.

He's seen his brother kiss countless girls; he thinks maybe he was eleven or twelve when Dean began sneaking them in, but he's never seen this, and his fingers clench and unclench helplessly into the couch cushion beneath him. He notices absently that the Pink Floyd has slid smoothly into Hendrix; Larissa has gotten up from the couch and is whispering something into blue-haired Naomi's ear. Two more men and a woman whose names passed him by chat animatedly in the corner, the rest of the world inconsequential, and Dean and the guy are still pressed together, Dean's face tilted up because the guy is really tall, _about my height_, Sam realizes, mouth going dry.

Naomi's voice cuts clear through the haze, unexpected and slightly shrill.

"Hey, Dean, just a heads up – your brother is here; thought you might wanna know." She leans back in her chair, lets her eyes slide over Sam as she forms the words.

To his credit, Dean doesn't startle or flinch, just moves his hand from where it'd been fisted in the guy's shaggy hair, pulls back slowly as he scans the room. His eyes narrow briefly as he considers Naomi, and then he smiles, wide and bright.

"Sammy! What the hell are you doing here? Thought I told you not to wait up."

Sam's knee meets the coffee table with a thump, and pain jolts through his leg as he stumbles off the couch. He's painfully aware of the fact that all other conversation in the room has come to a sudden and definitive halt, the possibility of a brotherly dispute undoubtedly a topic of interest. The words tumble out of his mouth before he's had a chance to think them through, and he knows he sounds petulant, but by now it's nothing he can help.

"Aren't you going to introduce me?"

"Where are my manners," Dean snorts and rolls his eyes. "Shannon, Sam, my crybaby brother. Sam, Shannon. Happy? Now, what's so important that it couldn't wait till I got back?"

Sam tries not to stare at Shannon's pale arm, still draped over his brother; under his unruly mop, there is a glint of metal – a little ring piercing through his eyebrow. A second ring bisects his lip, and Shannon tongues at it absently, studying Sam with a flick of long lashes.

"Give me a minute, wouldja?" Dean says, shamelessly runs his thumb over Shannon's mouth, tugging briefly at the ring, and the guy lets out a tiny gasp, swipes his obscenely pink tongue over Dean's hand. Another glint of metal catches Sam's eye – of course, a tongue stud; _where isn't this guy pierced?_ he almost asks, but manages to stifle the question down.

"Ruby came to see me," he says instead, watching with satisfaction as this time, Dean flinches, pales, and begins to do up his belt.

"What is that, like, code?" Shannon asks, but Dean doesn't pause; he is off down the hallway, doors thudding in his wake. He is finishing up the buttons on his flannel as he comes back, jacket slung over his arm.

"I'm sorry. I gotta go," he says, avoiding Shannon's eyes.

"Just like that?" Shannon's voice is disappointment and confusion rolled into one, and Sam stifles a pleased smile.

"Yeah, just like that. I'm sorry, I really am, but, I gotta…" Dean trails off without offering any more explanation, pulls his jacket over his shoulders, extending an open palm to Sam for the car keys. Sam hands them over and heads for the door, knows with certainty that Dean is following.

"I'll call you," Dean promises from the doorstep.

"Yeah," Shannon says in a small voice, and Naomi offers a shrill "I told you so" from the living room. Sam hears Shannon tell her to shut up before the door cuts him off.

"Well?" Dean prompts, "What about Ruby?"

"She had some very interesting things to share about the Colt, and Melchiresa," Sam tells him, opening the car door. "You know what, why don't you let me drive? Honestly, Dean, you look all… worn out."

***

Breakfast the next morning is a strained affair; in the diner, Dean hides behind his enormous plate of eggs and sausage, buries his face in his coffee mug as Sam pokes angrily at his toast. It's a little burnt, but his omelet makes up for it, stuffed full of peppers, mushrooms and just the right amount of cheese on top. The waitress comes over several times to refill their cups without being asked, and Sam makes a mental note to tip her generously before they hit the road.

He studies the way Dean's mouth shifts as he chews, notices yet another hickey higher up on his throat, and thinks now is as good a time as any.

"He remind you of anyone?"

"Who?" Dean asks with a confused shake of his head. "Who reminds me of who now?"

"Shannon," Sam repeats, patience wearing thin, "does he remind you of anyone?"

"The hell are you talking about, dude?"

"Shannon? That guy you fucked? Or did he fuck you? I'm not too clear on the details," he says in an icy tone, watches Dean bite on his lower lip the way he does when he's thinking too hard.

"Inquiring minds want to know, do they," Dean finally smirks, pushing aside his cup, "well, I don't kiss and tell, Sammy."

"It's Sam," he corrects, something he hasn't done in months, "and since when is that the policy? What happened to 'she's so flexible, Gumby girl', and 'God, she let me come all over her tits'? Come on, big brother; regale me with some more stories of your many conquests."

"Jesus, _Sam_, what crawled up your ass this morning," Dean mutters, scanning the room for their waitress. She materializes obediently next to their booth, fresh pot of coffee at the ready, and Dean gives her a small smile as she pours.

"Me and Shannon, it made you uncomfortable," he states triumphantly once the waitress is taking care of another table. "What's the matter, college boy? Here I thought school's supposed to be all about 'experimenting' or whatever they call it. You fall behind on your share?"

Sam ignores the jibe, focuses instead on the mental image of Shannon's face, the large, possessive hands, the messy too-long hair, the little barbell through the tongue that fills him with sparking, smoking rage. Ruby's mock-sweet voice taps against his eardrum, _Need to practice more, Sam, my man_, and he takes a deep breath, fixes Dean's eyes with his. When he speaks again, he can almost see the tendrils of his voice wrapping around his brother like a net, his words little barbed hooks sinking into Dean's flesh and making him obey.

_"Tell me about Shannon, Dean,"_ he says, cocking his head, watching Dean's pupils widen.

"What do you want to know?" Dean replies tonelessly, lips moving as if of their own volition, divorced from any conscious thought.

"Tell me about last night," Sam presses, "what he did to you. What you did to him. Did he suck your dick with that pierced fucking mouth? Did you suck his?"

"Yes," his brother says quietly, and then again, louder. "Yes."

"How many times have you done this?"

"Five," Dean answers obediently, "with Shannon. There was a guy in Nevada, once, I don't remember his name. Couple of others. And Will, in Palo Alto; I stayed with him for two days, was gonna come see you, but I couldn't. Will was very tall."

"Like Shannon," Sam nods. "You let him fuck you?"

"No, not Shannon," Dean explains, and Sam notes what that means, the nameless guy in Nevada or Will from Palo Alto having gotten what Shannon hasn't. His brother confirms it in the same hollow voice, tells Sam about Shannon spread out on the bed, about the tattoo on his back, a big blackbird with outstretched wings that rippled as Dean fucked into him.

"No clothes, he really is nothing like you, Sammy; all you have on your back are scars…" Dean stops mid-word, anger settling across his face. "What the fuck is going on?" he hisses, "Sam, what the fuck did you do to me?"

"Nothing," Sam says, trying to keep his calm; he is prepared, been waiting for Dean to shake off the trance. _"We had breakfast. We were talking about the case, then Ruby. You thought the waitress had a nice rack. You should call her over; we're ready for the check now."_

Dean dazedly rubs at his forehead.

"That was weird. Like, déjà vu, or something. Anyway, we should hit the road; let me flag down Chesty La Rue for the check, and we can get the hell outta here."

***

Dean hums along with the radio as he drives, tapping a beat on the steering wheel, normal as normal can be. Still, Sam can't help it; he gives his brother surreptitious glance after surreptitious glance, desperately wanting to make sure he is fine. Guilt reddens his cheeks, pools bitter in his mouth as he sneaks a peek of Dean's fingers dancing over radio knobs, the little patches of roughened skin over his knuckles. The glint of Dean's ring reminds him of Shannon's, and he throws a quick look to Dean's mouth, catches a glimpse of tongue darting out over the chapped bottom lip. Dean stops humming and chews on the offending skin thoughtfully, but he is relaxed, he is alright, nothing in his demeanor hinting at what Sam did to him mere hours before.

He almost wants to say he is sorry – almost, because Dean wouldn't know what Sam is apologizing for, and with luck, he never will. It was a one time thing, Sam decides, he was stressed and angry, and he let things get out of hand. The analytical part of him notes that strengthened emotion had made for strengthened ability, and for a moment, he feels satisfied for having practiced, proud of figuring out that little tidbit. Ruby would approve, he thinks, _Ooh, Sam, that was really good_, but she is the last person he ought to be seeking approval from. He has to remind himself that she isn't a person at all, she is a demon, useful yet expendable, and clamps his own teeth down on his lip in frustration, sneaks another look at Dean to steady himself.

_No clothes, he really is nothing like you, Sammy; all you have on your back are scars_, Dean had said over the remnants of breakfast. He wonders if Will, the tall, but otherwise anonymous resident of Palo Alto, had been a Stanford student, searches his mind for any William or Bill in his classes, but comes up short. At least fifty thousand people in the town itself, about fourteen thousand students at the college, between undergraduate and post-grads, with probabilities and statistics suggesting a good portion of them being named Will, having mops of brown hair and large hands, needles and haystacks notwithstanding.

The tentative prickle at the back of his neck, and the sharp pain and darkness that follow come almost as a relief. Dean's voice comes through a thick, lumpy fog, "Sam, you alright, hey, Sam," before grinding out completely as the night sky sways into stark view, stars reflecting dimly in muddy little puddles under his feet.

_"You think I'd let him go? Don't you know there isn't a piece of him that isn't mine? "_

"Yours balls to soul, is he? That's a mighty big claim to make, Dead Man Walking. Come on, time's a-wasting, tick tock, tick tock; better give your brother a good-bye kiss, if he lets you."

"Not saying good-bye; you really are slow, aren't you? Remember all the things I found in my father's house?"

"What's left of it, you mean. What is it you found, Sam, dust and ashes? Break the salt line, now, or I start ripping you apart right in front of him."

Dean's head is down, face cradled in his hands, the knees of his jeans sodden on the muddy ground. The salt around him sparkles in the moonlight, the circle wide and uneven, and he stays silent and still.

"Oh, I am afraid I can't do that. Dean could, but he won't do it either, will you, Dean? He won't do it unless I tell him to."

"You think so? He jumps when you say jump, talks when you say talk, fucks on command? Doesn't look like that from where I'm standing. What's he giving up for you he hasn't already given up for everyone else?"

"You're wasting my time. Just tell me what I want to hear, and I promise, I will think about letting you go."

The sharp buzz of the phone rips through the chill of the night, and the darkness slowly recedes, until he can see through the windshield, cars zooming by on a bright, sunny stretch of road. Dean has pulled the car over, Sam guesses as his brother's face looms above him.

"Sammy, finally! You ok?"

"Peachy," he grits out, his body refusing to obey even the simplest commands. "Can you… you, answer that?"

Dean rummages in Sam's jacket pocket, the touch odd and fleeting, comes up with the cell and pushes the button hurriedly.

"Yeah? One minute, sweetheart. It's that Bella chick on the phone for you, _Darren_, you sly dog," he says, covering the mouthpiece with a broad palm. "You feel up to sayin' hi?"

He accepts the phone with unsteady fingers, wills his lips and tongue to move through a polite greeting.

"You're in luck, Mr. Henley," Bela's low, husky voice croons into his ear. "There's a fellow coming to New London, Connecticut for a few days next week who might have exactly what you're looking for. I've taken the liberty of letting him know you'll be stopping by. Mind you, he isn't cheap," she adds, "but I'm sure your client's satisfaction is worth every penny."

"There's a job in Connecticut," he explains to Dean once they've hung up. "A haunted, um, lighthouse. I think we should check it out after we're done here."

 

**Elizabethville, OH**

Sam dislikes the town almost right away; it comes as no surprise, then, that Dean takes to it like a fish to water.

"I don't see what's so wrong about this place, anyway. It's like the land of perpetual Mardi Gras," he says, chucking his bag onto the bed. "I'm kinda thinking we should go get some beads."

"What about those guys Father Gil was talking about?" Sam counters in irritation. "You know, 'like a switch had flipped'? He sounded pretty worried to me."

"Eh," Dean shrugs, staring at the ceiling in fascination. "So there's a suicide and a psycho scrap-booker; doesn't mean they were possessed. Check it out, ceiling mirrors."

"We should talk to some more people," Sam says, and Dean shrugs, makes a face at his reflection.

"What we should do is go back to Trotter's, get a couple of beers. The bartender, that Casey chick – I think there's some potential there," he interjects, and Sam fists his hands tight, counts to ten before he trusts himself to speak again without yelling.

"You go ahead and do that," he finally clenches out, "I'm going to talk to some more locals, see if I can dig up anything else."

"Suit yourself," Dean shrugs, grabbing his jacket, and slams the door as he saunters out.

***

In retrospect, Sam supposes it was rather stupid to expect Dean's behavior to change after the Shannon thing; sometimes his brother is really just a one-trick pony. At least Casey the bartender is safely female, usual and familiar territory, something Sam accepts as what Dean does, what he's always done, what he plans on doing for the next one hundred and nine days, god willing.

The thought doesn't make him feel any better.

He really does plan to talk to the sales people at the hobby store, maybe the waitresses at the diner down the street, but when he passes the church, his feet turn towards the sidewalk almost automatically.

For a brief moment, he stands on the granite steps outside, tries to collect his thoughts, and assures himself that Dean remembers nothing, that he isn't acting any different, that he isn't delighting in the town atmosphere and trying to pick up the bartender in order to get back at Sam for what he did.

Dean doesn't remember, but Sam does, and it's that memory that finally gets him to push on the heavy wood of the doors, Dean's voice ringing thickly through his mind. _All you have on your back are scars. What's going on? Sammy, what the fuck did you do to me?_

Sam settles into the pew, head bowed, hands folded in his lap. It's too warm; the air is stagnant, heavy with the scent of melted wax and tiny flecks of dust circling languidly through the aisle.

"Our Father, who art in heaven," he whispers, the words echoing off the stone tiles with a hiss. "Hallowed be thy Name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is –"

There is a buzz somewhere in the rafters above him, a faulty fluorescent light or a struggling heating vent, a strange and unsettling accompaniment to his words, and he speaks louder, clenches his hands a little bit tighter.

"Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."

It _is_ a fluorescent; the buzzing intensifies, and a quick, pulsing flicker plunges the pew in front of him into momentary shadow, then light, then back again. Sam glances around suspiciously – flickering lights have never been a good sign in their profession – turns to check out the aisle, the massive front doors, the little side hallway, but sees nothing except for the soft green glow of exit signs reflected in the darkened windows.

"On earth as it is in heaven," he repeats, closing his eyes. It's simple logic, a balanced equation, a law of symmetry. If there is a hell, there is a heaven, the earth an enormous x-axis between them, with its poor and tired, countless mouths hungry for daily bread.

"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us."

It's no use; even with his eyes closed, Sam can still feel the flicker, black and red against the inside of his eyelids. The cushion under him is too worn, too thin; the space between the pews is too narrow, nowhere near enough room for his knees and ankles. He stands, stretching his arms, rolls his stiff shoulders, cracks the joints in his legs with a series of dry, unsatisfying clicks.

"Lead us not into temptation," he concludes quietly, walking out of the pew, but loathe to go with the words incomplete, even if they carry no clarity or guidance. "Deliver us from evil."

He is halfway to the exit when he hears the footsteps, a scratchy voice muttering irately about faulty wiring.

"Good evening, Father Gil," he calls out, waits for the priest to make his way up the row.

"Sam; what a pleasant surprise," Father Gil says just as the electricity finally stops flickering, bathing the two of them in pale neon light. "Is there something I can do for you?" he smiles, and lets his eyes blink to an unrelenting, solid black.

"Oh, come on. What is it you're going for, a gun? _Holy water_?" he laughs as Sam stumbles back. "You really think that'll do something, you go right ahead and try. I won't stop ya." He spreads his arms wide, gesturing at the large wooden cross at the back of the church, the pulpit with its small microphone, the somber faces of the saints on the stone walls. "Look around you, boy! This is the house of god, his own personal little embassy on earth, and yet somehow, here I stand. How 'bout that? What, you think you can do something to me the good lord isn't capable of?" The demon clicks its tongue against its teeth. "Ah, well, pride goeth, et cetera."

The lights flicker again as the demon steps forward, hands outstretched, but this time, Sam is ready for what's coming. He feels the blast of air, the great push meant to throw him back into the pew and pin him against wood and stone, and pushes back just as hard.

"Neat trick," Father Gil chuckles, pulling at his starched, white collar, "shame you can't keep it up for very long."

The demon is right; Sam struggles to stay on his feet, concentrates on _pushing_ as hard as he can, but it's like trying to move a mountain. Pain is already knocking at the back of his head; something warm trickles down over his mouth and he licks out reflexively, tastes blood, realizing more is coming from his nostrils. He considers his options quickly. Compared to the demon they faced in Chicago, the one possessing Father Gil is markedly stronger. He can't even come close to throwing it back; his gun is close to useless, as are his knives. Holy water is his only recourse, and if it doesn't work, then he needs to stall this thing, distract it, keep it taunting and talking while he thinks of something else to try.

"Are you working for Melchiresa?" he blurts out as the pain becomes almost too much, and braces himself for the impact.

It doesn't come. The demon stops and regards him idly, adjusting its collar again.

"No. Are you trying to make me an offer?"

Its steps echo loudly throughout the building as it walks closer to Sam, sliding into a pew just a couple of yards away.

"Have a seat," it says, patting the bench. "I'm open to talking things out."

Sam eyes the demon warily, but it only nods its head.

"Go ahead and sit down. Truce. For the next," it pulls up a sleeve, tapping on an expensive-looking wristwatch, "say, fifteen minutes. You have my word."

"Demons lie," Sam says warily. "How do I know you're being sincere?"

"I swear it by the Morning Star," the demon says, inclining its head, and Sam feels a shiver run through him at the words, a momentary spark of energy charging the air between them.

"Alright," he nods, withdrawing both his gun and flask of holy water from his pockets all the same. "You try anything, and I will use these. Maybe shooting you won't do any lasting damage, but I doubt it will feel very good regardless. And I am prepared to take my chances with the holy water."

"Of course," the demon says amicably as Sam settles into the pew behind it. "On my part, if you should break truce, I will bash your head against that column. Let me ask you a question, though. Do you really feel comfortable using _that_? See, I've always been of the mind that only a true believer ought to reap the benefits of faith, as it were. And here you are, throwing around holy things, like the contents of that flask right there, but I heard you earlier, rattling off the words. 'Forgive us our trespasses', indeed. Tell me, do you at least try to tell yourself you're not praying out of habit?"

"There are more important things to discuss than the depth of my faith."

"If you insist, but it is my job to ask, Sam," Father Gil says, gesturing to his vestments. "Know what I noticed as I've been shepherding my flock? All in all, there are only two reasons people come to church. Habit's the big one, of course. Tradition. The second one, though, that one tastes sweeter. Can feel it rolling off them for miles, so good and thick. Can feel it on you, too, you're no stranger to it."

It leans back, lets its head loll on the top of the bench, staring at Sam with upside down eyes.

"Guilt. What do you feel so guilty about, hmm? Or is atonement just another tradition? When's the last time you really confessed, Samuel, enumerated all your sins down to the detail and spilled them out and let them go?"

The demon flips over, the motion too quick and strange for its middle-aged body, its arms folded under a sagging chin.

"That's not what the lot of you does – all you humans, you come into this empty house, and you say the words about how guilty you are, how much you have to atone for, but you never really do. You take them right back home with you and you keep right on sinning, wallowing in that tasty guilt all the while."

It looks at its watch and stands up, its long, swaying shadow sliding over bench and floor and Sam as the light begins to buzz and flicker once more.

"You come in here and you ask me things you know nothing about. I'll tell you, boy, I'm good here. I won't work for Melchiresa, and I won't work for you. Azazel, he had big plans, big ambitions, and we all know where all those plans ended up when your brother put a bullet between his eyes. Now Melchiresa's got some plans of her own, and if they end up in the same place, good riddance. I don't know, maybe you've got some plans, too – my girl thinks you might – but I got myself a sweet little place right here, and I don't need them."

"Your girl," Sam repeats, and the demon nods, jowly face stretching into a big smile.

"You may've seen her around Trotter's, tending bar – hot little body, goes by 'Casey'. Come to think of it, your brother's probably taking her home right about now. I'm sorry, Sam. I did enjoy our little chat, but that's fifteen minutes you really could have used to get to him before she does. Oops."

Father Gil's hands reach back up to his throat, slowly pull the priest's collar away from his black shirt and let it drop to the floor.

"Don't guilt yourself over, it, Sam. Your brother's going to be in hell no matter what you do. It's really just a question of how soon you let go."

The demon is about to say something else, but the church doors swing open with a crash, old wood creaking painfully against the stone. The gun shot is deafening, but it misses its target, and the demon lifts a lazy hand, sends the shooter sprawling.

"Bobby!" Sam yells, rushing over to his side, reeling against the wind whipping in through the open doors. He guesses more than he sees the demon raise up its arms for another attack as Bobby shoves the Colt into his grasp, and ignores the pain blossoming through his head as he _reaches_ and _pushes_, pinning Father Gil's body in place.

"Don't worry, I'm not planning on beating myself up over this," he says as he pulls the trigger and the body crumples to the floor with a crackle of static electricity.

Bobby is watching with a frown, and Sam starts towards the doors. "Come on, the other demon's got Dean. We need to get over there."

***

He tries to keep it in, tries not to make a scene in front of Bobby, but the way Dean is looking back and forth between him and the body of the girl – the demon – Casey, the bullet wound in her chest still smoking with residual energy, makes Sam unable to keep the words from tumbling out.

"You know, just once – just goddamn once – I'd like to see you make a decision with something other than your dick. She was a demon, Dean! What the hell were you thinking?"

Dean crouches down, runs his hand over the dead girl's face. He doesn't stand up after closing her eyes.

"I knew she had a demon in her when I followed her out of the bar," he says quietly; there is a smudge of blood on his fingers, a small trickle of it drying in the corner of the girl's mouth.

"Great. That makes it an infinitely better decision," Sam snaps, surveying the pages of scrawled Latin text scattered all over the room. "Let me guess, she was on to you, too."

"Yeah, she knew who I was," Dean says, still staring down at her face, her awkwardly bent arm. If she were still breathing, it would hurt, the wrist trapped under her side, the elbow overextended.

"And she wasn't into being sent back to hell, I take it," Sam grabs a page off of the floor.

Dean straightens up, wipes his bloody hand on the hem of his tee; it's not a very new shirt, black faded to spotty grey from one too many spin cycles, but still, the gesture strikes Sam as unnecessary.

"I could have done most of it from memory. We were… she was talking."

"Talking; that's real useful. Aren't you the one always reminding me that demons lie?"

Dean narrows his eyes, stares pointedly at the Colt, now holstered at Sam's hip.

"Right. And just once – just goddamn once, Sam – I'd like to see you remember that."

"Don't throw my words back at me."

"Fuck you," Dean says, but his tone's tired more than it is combative; he sighs, pulls his jacket closed and does up the zipper halfway. "Demons lie, yeah, sure. But lately, they've all been telling the same lie, and I don't know about you, but it makes me fucking nervous. Ruby –"

"Ruby fixed the Colt for us, Dean, as you can see."

Bobby coughs, and Dean turns towards him, one hand still on the pull of the zipper.

"You gonna lay into me too? I had it handled."

Bobby coughs again, covering his mouth.

"Nah. What's important is you're alright, the both of ya. Sam, you be careful with that gun. There were seven new bullets in it tonight, and you're down to five, now. And I'm telling you, there won't be more where those came from, not again. You're playin' with fire, and that ain't ever good, even without demons getting involved."

They part ways outside, Bobby getting into a small old car of indeterminable color.

"I'm gonna go grab some coffee," Sam says, declining Dean's offer of the keys. "Think you can manage to get back to the room without a chaperone?"

"Fuck you," his brother says again, and slams the car door extra loud.

***

"You know, I am becoming really fond of these little dates of ours. Nice cup of coffee, food to share. A girl could get used to this."

"You're not a girl," Sam tells her, stirring cream and sugar in.

"Buzzkill," Ruby retorts, picking through the assorted sweetener packets until she finds a Sugar in the Raw. "See if I pick up the check now."

"Didn't know you were planning to before," he says curtly, tasting the coffee. "Isn't this where I am expected to pay up?"

Ruby scrunches up her pale eyebrows, combs a hand through her hair. "Pay up? What for?"

"Don't play stupid with me. I've got the Colt now, don't I, the means to break the deal… although I have to admit, I am very curious as to how you fixed it."

"Your friend Bobby was there," she smiles. "Didn't he fill you in?"

"Believe it or not; he didn't. Was pretty adamant about there not being any more bullets where these seven came from."

"Five now, right?" Ruby verifies, and rips open another sugar packet. "It's a tempering process. For the bullets, I mean. The gun, it's already as special as it's gonna get, but it needs some mighty special bullets to do its thing. There's some heat, some molds, some casting, a lead alloy. I don't know the percentage. Metalwork's not really my thing. Some chanting, while the lead cools. And an extra-special, super-secret ingredient, of course."

She lifts her arm, calling out to the waitress manning the counter.

"Can I get a refill on this 'Bottomless Cup of Java', please? Actually, why don't you just bring over the pot?"

Sam waits for the server to retreat back to her post, waits for Ruby to wade through the pile of creamers until she finds a non-dairy.

"Here," he says impatiently, opening up two packets with the Sugar in the Raw logo and dispensing them into her cup.

"Why, thank you!" she exclaims, taking a deliberately slow sip.

"The super-special ingredient," he reminds her, and she nods, setting the cup down.

"Blood," she says cheerfully, plucking a mozzarella stick from the plate. Her nails are long and polished pink, and she holds the fried cheese daintily, little finger pointed out. "It's always blood with things like these. So unoriginal! Honestly, it's a wonder you haven't guessed on your own."

Sam ignores the jibe, stares at her over the hills and valleys of half-eaten appetizers and empty creamer packets.

"So, what, you prick your finger, and that's it?"

"Don't be that way, Sam; you know that's not it. As I said, it's a tempering process, and there is an incantation. And it definitely can't be my blood, since, despite all this lovely skin and hair and other relevant equipment, I'm still not a girl, as you're so fond of reminding me. Would you relax? You're practically twitching."

"The blood, Ruby," he sighs, "whose blood does it have to be?"

"A gun made for a hunter; made to kill demons. Think about it. Come on, take a guess."

"Just tell me!" he yells, and Ruby pouts her pink-painted lips.

"You're going to get us kicked out of here for disturbing the other diners and the lovely wait staff, and I haven't even finished my drink yet."

"Ruby –"

"Alright, alright, hold your horses, I'll tell you. You still have five bullets left, how much shooting are you planning on doing?"

"As much as it takes," Sam says darkly. "If I have to start with you, I will."

She pours herself more coffee, tops off Sam's cup as well.

"You know, we were having a pleasant conversation, and you had to go and ruin it by making threats you have absolutely no plans to go through with. It takes the blood of a righteous man, ok? And I don't mean, like, Leviticus righteous, what with keeping the Sabbaths, or not wearing garments made of different thread, taking the neighbors out for a good old-fashioned stoning and keeping the nakedness of your brother's wife firmly covered, 'for it is as your brother's nakedness' or some such."

She pauses to take a sip of her coffee, another bite of fried cheese. "I suppose, in the spirit of feminism, modernity and political correctness, they really ought to change the wording to include righteous women. All these spells are so delightfully behind the times, don't you think? In any case, the blood in question needn't come from a saint. What you do need is a man who believes in his cause, believes enough to be willing to die for it. Someone who has no doubt that his actions serve the greater good. A champion, if you will. A warrior."

"A hunter," Sam finishes for her, and Ruby nods her head.

"Sure. One caveat, though. The blood needs to be given willingly, or the entire thing's a no-go. Let's see, what are you going to ask me next, hmm… is it, 'Geez, Ruby, how much blood would I need?' It is, isn't it? Well, I'll tell you," she says, reaching a hand across the table. Her fingers stray across his, shivering up his wrist until they find the pulse point.

"According to your friend Bobby – and Google – the maximum allowable blood loss for a healthy adult male is a bit under 3000 cc's. How much you actually need depends on how many bullets you want, of course."

She strokes her index finger over the vein in his wrist, lightly presses a pink nail into the skin. It doesn't hurt, but when she lifts her finger, Sam sees the little half-moon mark it left behind.

"Curiosity satisfied? Now, what was it you were saying about having the means to break the deal… Oh, right. You think a piece of blood-tempered metal is the end-all and be-all solution to your problems. Explain to me how you think that works, would you?"

He lets her soft, smooth fingers interlace with his over the scratched surface of the table and rubs his thumb over hers for a moment before squeezing her hand, hard.

"That hurts," Ruby says softly, and he watches her knuckles go white between his, the blush of blood creeping up to her nails. He squeezes harder, feels her thumb bend awkwardly in his grasp, leans in to hear her little pained whimper.

"Not as much as a bullet," Sam says, finally letting go.

She gives him an angry glare, rubbing feeling back into the darkened skin of her hand, reaching for her coffee cup with trembling fingers.

"You won't shoot me; not while you still need me. Honestly, Sam, what do you think you're going to do? Storm the nearest crossroads, summon the bitch, and threaten to put a hole in her unless she lets your brother go?"

"That was the plan."

"Ok," Ruby nods, pulling out a small, zippered wallet. "Let me know how it goes. No, no, don't pussy out now. Go through with it. Who knows, maybe you'll get lucky."

She deposits a twenty dollar bill on the table, weighs it down with her emptied cup.

"Dinner's on me, but do me a favor and cover the tip, would you?"

***

Sam buries bones and a piece of laminated cardboard in the mud, digs in with his hands until his nails are full of grit. Darrell Sweet, wildlife marshal, his hair a bit shorter and his eyes a little brighter than they are now, smiles white and gleaming at the sky, then vanishes under the dirt and the gravel.

"Come on," he mutters, turning east, south, west, "come on, come out here," waiting for a glimpse of the demon's borrowed tight black dress and smooth skin.

"Patience is a virtue," Sam hears, a deep, thick laugh from behind him, and whirls around, tightening his grip on the gun.

"Sorry I'm late," the demon smiles, brushing a piece of non-existent lint from a crisp black lapel. "I was picking out a suit. Do you like it?"

He opens his mouth, but the demon beats him to it, holding a ringed hand up to the light.

"Of course you like it. If you didn't, I would've worn something else."

It's nothing like the visions he's been having. He's seen short brown hair and a slick pink mouth, a smattering of freckles across tanned cheekbones, but they belonged to a woman, not the man pulling idly at his tie, staring at Sam with hooded red eyes. Then again, Sam's pretty sure he's not supposed to be here, at the crossroads, this far ahead of schedule. In his visions, Dean's always been there, kneeling behind him in a circle of thickly layered salt, but his contract's not up yet, won't come up for close to three more months.

He shakes his head; of course, this is nothing like his vision. He is forcing the issue.

"I wondered when I'd be seeing you," the demon tells him, taking a large step forward. "It really is a pleasure. Although, I must say, I thought you'd be taller."

It grins at its own quip, looking up at Sam from maybe six feet of height, maybe six one, six two at most.

"So, what do you want from me, Sam?" the demon asks, and licks its lips.

"My brother's contract, broken," he says, and points the gun at the center of its chest, something the demon pointedly ignores.

"Would that be the same brother who'll probably drive you to drink if left to his own devices? The same brother who thinks with the wrong head more often than not? The same brother you think about – "

"Only got the one," Sam cuts it off, nodding. "And I'm really not in the mood for any more headgames tonight. Let me make myself clear: you break the contract, right now, I live, Dean lives, and you get to live."

The demon purses its lips, clasps long, agile fingers together in front of its flat stomach.

"I'd love to help you out, Sam; I really would. But I'm not the guy, you see. I don't own the contracts. I'm just a salesman – a saleswoman, on occasion; I don't discriminate between suits. I don't have the means to break Dean's deal any more than you do."

"You're lying," Sam says in a flat voice, but this is what Ruby told him would happen when she sent him out here, Colt in hand.

"Afraid not," the demon shrugs. "You can wave that gun of yours around all you want, but this deal can't be broken. Speaking of guns, how did you get that piece of junk working again?"

"Got someone to make me a few more bullets," Sam says, fingers tensing over the trigger. "You want to see how well they work?"

"Ruby. Ruby helped you? Well, shit, I guess she would, wouldn't she," the demon says, more to itself than to Sam. "Anyway, I'm sorry, but I think we're done here."

Sam raises the gun a fraction of an inch, aims it straight at the flash of skin inside the demon's open collar.

"We're done when I say we're done. If you don't have the means to break the contract, then tell me who does. You make the deals; who do you make them for?"

"Believe me, Sam, my boss won't break this deal, either. Not for you." The demon stretches its arms to its sides, open, unguarded. "You think I'm lying, still. Go ahead, then, shoot me. Trust me; it won't help you, or Dean."

"Maybe. But you'll still be dead," Sam says, and pulls the trigger.

The all too familiar pain shoots through his skull at the same time as the bullet rips into the demon's shirtfront, and he lowers himself to the ground, preparing to ride it out. It's not the same crossroads rising before him in flashes of sharp, piercing hurt, Dean behind him in a haphazard circle of shimmering salt.

_"You don't understand; you don't get to take him from me. What's mine is mine, and I won't share."_

"Break the fucking salt line, Sam, I mean it."

"No."

"Alright, we'll do it the hard way. Remember, you'll have only yourself to blame."

"There won't be any blame. I win this one. I have seen it."

Sam pushes himself up from the mud, rubs at his throbbing temples as he turns around. He gives one last glimpse to the body in the middle of the road, a young man in an expensive blood-stained suit, green eyes turned sightless, and fights down the urge to vomit.

The next morning, they leave for Connecticut.


	2. New London, CT to Andover, MA

**New London, CT**

"Did you know that, unlike its English namesake, this Thames River isn't actually a river? It's a tidal estuary," Ruby says behind his shoulder and quickens her pace to catch up. "Also, it's actually pronounced 'Thames', not 'Temz'. I looked it up on Britannica dot com."

"That's great," Sam tells her, "very helpful."

"Yeah, unlike the guy you're meeting. This is going to be a total waste of your time."

"You know him?"

"Eugh," Ruby scrunches up her face as if at a foul smell. "Not personally. I know of him, and that's quite enough, thanks."

"That bad, huh?" he stops, checks the building number against the note clutched in his hand.

"Would I lie to you?" she smiles, reaching into her purse, and comes up with a bulging envelope. "Here, you'll need this."

Sam accepts the envelope and looks inside with a frown. "How much is in here?"

"Almost four grand – I tried to go for all hundreds, but, alas," she shrugs, "you take what you can get."

"I'm not even going to ask where this came from," he says with a shake of his head.

"I like to be prepared. Figured you'd want to go through with this regardless of my expressed opinion, so I went ahead and approximated the fair market price of what you're going to get here."

"And what's that?"

She shrugs again, and makes an obscene gesture with her fist. "A total waste of your precious time, I already told you. What does big brother Dean think you're doing right now?"

"Researching the history of the Lighthouse Inn; with my luck, it probably isn't even haunted."

"Oh, it is. Not the mansion part, just the carriage house; that's where the original owner hung himself after his new bride broke her neck on the stairs. Charles Guthrie, 1903, in the rafters, with the rope, if you're looking for specifics. Want a printout?" she laughs, the smile crinkling her demon-black eyes, and points to a building ahead. "Hey, there's two eighty five; looks like this warehouse is your stop. I'm ok with waiting out here, don't worry."

"Wasn't worried," Sam mutters to himself, pulling on the unlocked door.

It's dark inside the warehouse, and Sam pulls out his flashlight, illuminates the dim shapes of assorted crates and boxes that dissolve back into the black as he passes them by. A strip of yellow light outlines an office door on the second level, the sole indication of someone else's presence. Sam climbs the metal staircase up, each step loudly announcing his ascent, and hears a harsh "It's open," as he tries the door handle.

"I don't want to know your name," the man behind the desk says, a pack of cigarettes seemingly materializing between his fingers. He looks to be in his late forties, maybe early fifties, dirty blond hair beginning to recede above a wide, lined forehead. Like Bela Talbot's, his pronunciation is decidedly un-American. "Don't give a rat's arse about who sent ya, don't care why you're so interested in this shite. Sit."

He pulls out what turns out to be the last cigarette in the batch, crumples the empty pack into the ashtray. In the crush of cardboard, Sam can only make out one corner of the logo, a block of purple against the white of the pack, the gold lettering folded in upon itself.

The man exhales, watches the smoke drift up to the low ceiling. "Three thousand US, cash."

"What does that buy me?"

"Three thousand gets you the text of a ritual, instructions and a comment or two from me. Another grand'll get the ritual done for you, if you can't go through with it."

"Why wouldn't I be able to go through with it? Extremely obscure ingredients? A whole new language to learn?"

The man's chuckle turns into a cough, and he swabs at his mouth with a dirty handkerchief.

"Nothing like that. It's bloody straight forward, just like all magic, really – any cunt could do it. Release a man's soul from demonic control, send it where it belongs. Only problem is, demons don't tend to like that sorta thing much, as you might guess. Most people don't want to chance making it worse, leave it up to the experts."

"I'll do it myself," Sam pronounces a little too quickly, and the man nods, crumpling the handkerchief in his fingers; it's even grimier now, speckled with fresh, dark red.

"Of course you will," he agrees, folding the handkerchief back into his pocket. "You read Latin, I gather," he says, and it sounds more like a statement than a question. He doesn't wait for Sam to confirm, reaching somewhere within the depths of the desk, and sets the book in front of him with a heavy thump.

Sam reaches into his own pocket for Ruby's envelope, tuning out all thoughts of where the cash may have come from. It's no different from the money Dean brings back from pool halls, no different than change from a register; there are no suspicious stains on the bills, no gritty, coppery smell or smudged prints, only ink shaped into dead, empty faces. _Dean_, he thinks, willing his hands into casual movement, opens the envelope at the man to flash what's inside.

"We got ourselves a deal, then?" the man regards the money impassively, and although Sam doesn't remember him pulling open another pack, there is a fresh cigarette hanging from his mouth, and the lighter's back, sparking against the tabletop.

"Let me hear those comments first," he says; a vague memory of Dean, cigarette pressed between his lips, coalescing in his mind. Dean hasn't bought a pack in years, although he'll always take a smoke when offered, always has a light ready. He must have been sixteen or seventeen when he tried out the habit, _sixteen_, Sam finally recalls, they were spending a summer in Virginia, and Dad had been so angry, _that's not what the fake I.D.s are for, and you know it, son._ He shakes his head, trying to clear it of Dean, at sixteen, nineteen, today, probably honestly doing his part of questioning the Lighthouse Inn's desk clerks and maids.

"Well," the man grins, plucking the cigarette from his mouth with long, deft fingers. "First, I'd make sure the bloke you're putting yourself on the line for is worth the trouble. But you've already made up your mind on that, I think." A bit of ash crumbles off of his cigarette, swirls down over the desktop in little flakes.

"It will work best if you start your preparations immediately following his death – you should be with him when he dies, if you can help it. On the third and the ninth day, you will perform the first two parts of the ritual. If you miss those, you'll have to wait until the fortieth, and do the entire thing then; if you do the first bits on those two days, you won't need to repeat them again on the fortieth, only the part explained on the last five pages. You need me to explain the significance of the numbers to you?"

"It's an Eastern Orthodox thing, isn't it?" Sam asks. "The third day is when the soul theoretically departs the earth for good, and between the ninth and the fortieth it's taken through heaven and hell, to show it what is in store?"

"Not only that," the man coughs, "but during that time is when the family of the departed, as well as anyone else that wishes to do so, can pray for the soul, so when it is finally brought to judgment at the end of the fortieth day, those prayers can tip the scales and sway the hand of god – which makes them rather similar to bribes, come to think of it. In any case, what you will be doing, since the passing of this soul will have been most unnatural, is trying to restore that natural order. Make the man upstairs pay attention, so that on the fortieth day he can intervene. Mind you, if the soul would have gone to hell in the first place, those bribes will need to be bloody enormous."

"And then what?"

The man cocks his head, pulls on the thin black tie bisecting the well-worn white of his chest.

"Then, nothing. Twiddle your thumbs, or get him a nice headstone. Whatever strikes you as the most proper. If you'll have done everything right, by that point, he ought to be in a better place than you will."

"That's… it?" His mouth tastes sour, his tongue clumsily moving through the words. "It won't bring him back? He'll still be… "

The man nods, wincing as he inhales smoke. He presses a thick hand against his chest, rubs a small circle as he works through another dull cough, swallowing heavily.

"Still want the book?" he asks hoarsely, wiping his lips with the back of his hand; Sam can smell the sharp tang of blood in the air between them.

"I – yeah; I do," he sighs, setting the envelope down onto the desk. "It's not exactly what I was looking for, but it's still a lot better than nothing."

"Going with the glass half-full theory, are ya," the man says, nudging the book towards Sam. He stands, pulls his ratty tan trench coat from the back of his chair, and throws it over his shoulders. "I'd say it was a pleasure, but, well – " he trails off with a meaningful glance and follows Sam down the stairs to the exit.

***

Ruby is nowhere to be found when he makes it back out into the light of day; he waits until the man is gone as well before he gives in to the bitter anger twisting through his gut. The book is tucked safely into his bag; Sam tries to think about it rationally, tells himself it cost him nothing, it would have been foolish not to accept it, even if he isn't going to use it himself. At worst, it will just be another valuable addition to Bobby's collection. Still, his stomach roils and churns at the thought that this might just be it, the only possible solution to his dead end, and he clenches his fingers into his palms until he is sure he's drawn blood.

He still can't think of anything else when they go to the Lighthouse Inn later that night. Dean fills him in on the information he's managed to scrounge up almost gleefully, spending as much time outlining the murders committed by the vengeful ghost of Charles Guthrie as he does describing the numerous and intricate tattoos of Carrie, the desk manager. It's the thorough and detailed account of the ink snakes winding up to her shoulders that finally pushes Sam over the brink and into the teeth-grinding, counting-to-ten haze of barely contained rage.

He wants to grab Dean by his ink-free arms and shake him; wants to yell it into his grinning face. "Tattoos; how can you possibly think of tattoos right now, when months are ticking by and the only solution I've found still leaves you dead? The only tattoo you need is 'property of Sam Winchester, don't even think of taking me away from him' needled right across your goddamn forehead, deep enough so the ink seeps into your brain and your soul with it."

He doesn't say anything, clenches his lips up tight instead, saving the white-hot, choking fury for when Guthrie's ghost finally appears on the balustrade. When the pale, drawn shape of him, iridescent rope still wound tight around a bruised, twisted neck, flickers into being at the top of the stairs, it's almost too easy to _reach_ out and hurl every last molecule of that heat right between the brass buttons of his spectral vest.

Charles Guthrie's gray mouth rips open in a horrible silent scream as a dark frayed hole opens up in his chest; through it, Sam can clearly see the flowered wallpaper and a corner of a photo on the landing behind him. He hears Dean's sharp intake of breath to the side of him, and does it again, watches with satisfaction as Guthrie shivers and twists and disintegrates further, the frayed edges of the hole spreading wider like fire through paper.

"Christ," Dean gasps; the astonishment in his voice makes Sam flinch and lose his concentration, but it doesn't matter. Guthrie claws at the air with dissipating fingers, stretches a neck that already ends in tatters as the corruption eats at the remnants of his face until there is nothing left but a faint trace of ozone in the air.

He tucks his hands casually into his pockets, and starts walking towards the glowing red of the exit without bothering to wait for his brother.

***

"Fucking goddamn," Dean whistles, slamming the trunk over their unused guns. "Someone's been practicing."

Sam shrugs, hands still in his pockets, sawing his thumbnail into his index finger, back and forth, back and forth until the skin throbs. His brother starts the car, keys rattling against the console; the rock station out of Waterbury comes in, cheerful ad for Riverfest, local bands sponsored by Midas and Red Lobster. When Sam finally gets into the passenger seat, Dean reaches over and turns the radio down.

"That was pretty freakin' impressive, Sammy," he says, patting him on the arm. At the intersection of Mohegan and Norwich Ave, the traffic lights have turned from red to nighttime flashing yellow, and Sam turns his head, stares at the splash of light illuminating Dean's hand, his cheekbone, the small swatch of skin under his unbuttoned collar.

"Yeah?" he asks hoarsely, warm pressure of Dean's fingers settled next to his elbow.

"I might as well have gone for a beer," Dean chuckles, and moves his hand back onto the steering wheel; Sam shivers at the sudden loss of heat and touch.

He doesn't say anything, turns his eyes back onto the road, illuminated signs in all colors of the neon rainbow passing by. Store Twenty Four. Mobil station. Cracker Barrel. Girls, girls, girls, amateur night Tuesday. Don't put it off – pray with us today.

"You're gonna do ok, aren't you," Dean says suddenly, quietly, turning onto Pier Road, and Sam's breath sticks in his throat, catches oily and bitter on the back of his tongue. He stares at Dean again, the pale line of his neck, a little half-smile on his lips, and wills his fists to stay put.

"What the fuck is wrong with you," he whispers instead, watching the smile wipe off of Dean's mouth. "Don't fucking tell me how I'm gonna do – you don't get to fucking tell me what happens when you're not there – you –"

He chokes on his brother's name, vision blurring as he feels the car slow, the engine quieting as Dean pulls off the road.

"Sammy," he hears, Dean's voice shaky and soft, "Sammy, it's ok, it's gonna be ok, it's – "

It's not even close to ok, Sam thinks, streetlights splitting wetly into two and three in front of his eyes. Nothing is in the realm of ok, not the pain he inflicted on the mostly harmless ghost of Charles Guthrie, not the ritual he bought with someone else's money, not even Dean's fingers, back on his arm, little taps that are more hindrance than reassurance. Dean is taking this far too calmly, he decides, and maybe ninety percent of it is bluffing and bravado, but Dean shouldn't be laughing, shouldn't be saying "pretty freakin' impressive, Sammy," should be as disturbed as he was about Max Miller, about Andy and Ansem, as he would have been a year ago.

"You wanna go in?" Dean asks, and it takes Sam a moment to realize what he means; he blinks, once, twice, stares at the other cars parked in the lot, "cold beer" illuminated pink and purple in the window of the building in front of them, and chokes again, fingers grasping for the door handle. Dean's making peace the only way he knows how; the parking lot smells like old cigarette smoke, like gasoline and deep fryer oil. It's unsurprising that the place he wants to go into is the last place in the world they should be right now; there is nothing to celebrate, and Sam isn't quite ready to mourn.

"No, I don't, Dean, and you shouldn't either," he forces out through his teeth, trying not to look his brother in the eye, _but you're going to, anyway_, hanging in the space between them, unsaid. "I'm gonna take a walk. I'll see you back at the room," he adds, doesn't wait for Dean to respond before he turns and starts walking back towards Norwich Avenue.

***

_Don't put it off – pray with us today_ glares at him from the sign, plastic letters in shiny ordered rows. Sam pulls on the heavy door mechanically, feels the hinges sigh and squeak, his footsteps echo on the stone floor. The building isn't empty; there is a woman in a pew up ahead, head bowed solemnly over her clasped hands, and he can hear disordered singing – a rehearsal – filtering in from somewhere close as he sits down.

Habit's why people come to church; a demon may have been the one to tell him so, but that doesn't make it any less true. When Sam was small, church meant Pastor Jim and his soft, comforting voice, and a fidgety, restless Dean who couldn't wait to get back outside. As he got older, he went by himself; even John Winchester couldn't argue with that. He repeated Hail Marys and Pater Nosters, Latin and English, French when he took a semester in a Georgia high school; and all "god" ever meant was a refuge from fights with his father, from Dean and his girls and his teasing, from his "listen to Dad, Sammy", a time to sit and think and wonder if there was ever going to be anything else but this.

Sam puts his hands in his lap, fingers unfurled but tense, looks at the back of the woman's head, the soft part in her long graying hair, and wonders what she wants from god, what it is she's asking for with her bent neck and stooped shoulders. Is there anything she can really expect from a god who does nothing but take? A god who lets demons into his houses, lets them spread their webs and glut themselves on the blood of his faithful; a god who needs to be bribed to intervene for Dean's soul?

_Dean_. He doesn't know when it started, these painful, strange thoughts beginning to take shape and substance inside him, when the very idea of Dean changed in his mind. Maybe it hasn't. Maybe he has always loved Dean too much, and the thought of him being gone has finally put everything into sharp and clear perspective. _Gone_, not like in another state _gone_, hunting with Dad _gone_, stored in his phone's memory _gone_. This is dead gone, hellfire gone; even now it feels like Dean's already not entirely there, ever closer to the horizon with each step.

He wonders if Dean's still at the bar or if he has moved on by now; to the car, to their room, someone's soft, smooth hands on his body. A waitress, a college girl, or a boy, a man, tall and dark-haired; Dean had mocked him about it, back in Belvedere, after Shannon, _What's the matter, college boy, you fall behind on your share of experimenting?_ And Sam could've said something; could've explained that before Jess there had been Justin, lanky and serious, always fiddling with his glasses or his shirt-cuffs or tucking his hair back behind his ears. Four months of sitting next to him in freshman poli-sci, hours in his dorm room, rumpling his neatly made bed and carefully stacked pillows before Justin rubbed his hand over his temple, pushed a stray dirty-blond strand back. _Do you even like me, Sam? Are you ever gonna tell me anything?_ and that was that, and Justin moved three rows up in the lecture hall.

Jess never asked, never pushed. Always waited for Sam to be ready to tell her, and he tried, he really did, and he told her; just enough to get her killed and not enough to know why; he tastes salt in his mouth, teeth pressing hard and pitiless into his lower lip.

***

Surprisingly, Dean is snoring softly when Sam jiggles the key in the lock. He mutters something unintelligible as he rolls over onto his back; the faded teal blanket slides down and off as he moves, landing in the narrow space between their two beds. The television is on, set to something parading as educational; Discovery, National Geographic.

Sam picks up the blanket, throws it back over Dean before sliding into his own bed. He doesn't linger, doesn't stare at Dean's bare stomach, prickly trail of hair leading down to his shorts, doesn't reach out and slide his fingers over the hollow of Dean's throat, his chest, nipples dark little points in the cool air of the room.

Sam presses his palm into his thigh, lets his fingers brush against the fly of his boxers. His cock is hard, straining and needy; he is too warm, his entire body buzzing with a phantom ache that he can't dispel. He rubs a fingertip over the head of his dick, feels the bead of moisture well up at the slit; he wants to do more, wants to push the boxers down and wrap his hand around himself, wants to feel it, the heat in his stomach, slick slide of skin against skin.

In the other bed, Dean shifts, breathes out loud and long, and Sam stills, bites down on his mouth, hard, lets his hands fall to his sides.

"After the Yangtze, the Huang He is the second longest river in China," the television drones quietly, flickering between shots of rocky shores and bright yellow sand. "Over the centuries, it has been called many names, from 'China's Pride' and 'Great Mother' to 'Bringer of Sorrow', but –"

Sam sits up, holding his blanket tightly to his chest, reaches over and turns the knob, shutting the set off. Lying back onto his scratchy polyester pillowcase, he closes his eyes and tries to tune out the pulse in his cock, the slight wheeze of Dean's breaths, the low, yet persistent rattle of the heater. Sleep seems as far away as China. He thinks of little barges sliding down waves the color of mud, of the yellow silt and sand on the craggy coasts, tries to focus on the Huang He's languid flow to lull himself into a stupor, but nothing is working.

This isn't the first time he has heard the Yellow River referred to by its Chinese name, but something about it catches in his mind, the words still familiar, but out of context. Barefoot, still wrapping his blanket around him, he pads carefully across the squeaky floor to his duffel, searches through the pockets until he comes up with a little rectangular case. Giving a last quick glance over to Dean's bed, he takes his loot into the bathroom, and hesitates only a moment, hand poised over the knob, before he locks the door.

He opens the box with a click, upending it over the closed lid of the commode, fans the business cards out on the cool plastic. The plain white one on top is from an herb shop in West Virginia, run by a pretty Polish woman who isn't a hunter, but salts her doors and windows nevertheless, and always keeps an ear to the ground. The one right underneath is from a mechanic out of Tennessee – Sam ponders it for a moment, remembering something about reasonable deals and parts on short notice, and makes a mental note to give this one to Dean in the morning.

"Please, tell me I kept your card," he mutters, pushing aside papers of every color, texture and font. Some have little notes scrawled in quick ballpoint: "will barter – D. worked maintenance for room and board", "antiques and books – doesn't know shit, but first edition of the _Grimorium Verum_", "seriously – best chili in the state".

"Come on, come on," Sam growls at the cards in exasperation until he's finally plucked it from the pile, a smooth, off-white rectangle with three red Chinese characters printed above the black ink phone and e-mail address. He punches the numbers in with steady fingers, puts the rest of the cards back into the box, pressing his cell phone between shoulder and ear as he waits for Grace Bai to pick up. She doesn't.

"The number you have dialed is not in service at this time. Please hang up and try your call again," a mechanical voice supplies, but Sam is no longer listening; a search field on the computer is the next step once he's unlocked the door and zipped the box back into his bag, his fingers moving impatiently over the keys.

"What was it she called me," he whispers, faint light from the laptop's screen painting his hands and the table a dull blue, "yao-mo-wang? Huang yan?"

It takes him eighteen seconds to find a translating tool that uses Pinyin and English both, thirty four more to check all the words. "Si san ba" turns out to be an insult akin to the English "bitch"; likewise, "cao ni ma" is a reasonable stand-in for "motherfucker". In addition to meaning "sulfur" and "yellow", the word "huang" is a common surname; a "yan" is an eye. Childish slang aside, a "wang" is a term of respect, close to the English title of lord or a king. "Yaomo; phantom, monster, demon," Sam repeats to himself, and shuts the computer down.

***

He feels a strange calm settle over him as he meticulously packs up their things. He leaves a set of clothes out for Dean, and dresses himself, buttoning buttons and tying laces slowly and carefully, as if it isn't three hours on the wrong side of midnight, and months ago, a Chinese girl from Chicago didn't mistake him for a demon with piercing yellow eyes. He checks to make sure his knives and his guns are within reach, feels for the bottle of holy water in his pocket with a detached smile. When all of their bags have been loaded into the car, Sam turns on the overhead light and wakes his brother.

Dean's eyes are blurry from a few hours of sleep, and he says "Sammy" like it's a top secret password that will allow him back in bed to catch a few more.

"You can nap in the car," Sam smiles apologetically, "but we need to leave right now. _Come on, let me help you up_."

He manhandles his brother into jeans and boots, hands him his leather jacket, grabs up a blanket from one of the beds.

"_Sleep now_," he says gently, arranging Dean into the passenger seat, blanket tucked warm and safe around him, and guides the car onto the nearly empty highway.

 

**Chicago, IL**

The little fruit and vegetable stand on the corner is nothing but empty wooden beams and a dirty counter, a couple of boxes stacked dejectedly to the side. A large "closed" sign is plastered over the door to the Good Fortune, held up with yellow scraps of "do not cross" tape. The shops across the street are empty, boarded up windows and a forgotten plastic figurine of a smiling Buddha staring up at Sam in accusation.

The street is far from empty, but it takes him a moment to realize what's missing; he watches a trio of young women hurry by, speaking to each other in sharp, anxious tones, an older man yell after a boy on a green bicycle, a huddle of young guys in long, bulky jackets in the gaping mouth of an alleyway.

There are no tourists. No children demanding candies on sticks, dragon kites or paper fortunes. Nobody points fingers at ornate red gates; nobody smiles for sleek Kodak cameras, striking poses, hands on hips, chopsticks and stuffed pandas in hand. Sam is the only outsider as he traverses the sidewalk down to Grace Bai's place; he is also the only one strolling by himself. The locals bypass him quickly; none of them are alone, groups of two and three or more, eyes downcast, fists tangled in pockets.

The brick of Grace's building is scarred by fire; smudges of soot crawl up the walls and into cracked, dark windows. The first floor is wrapped in more police tape, yellow and ominous, and he doesn't bother trying the charred, squeaky staircase, pulls out his phone instead, frantically punches in the digits of Bobby's number.

"Know if anyone's been hunting through the Chicago area in the past couple of days, maybe weeks?" he demands instead of a greeting, but Bobby hardly seems surprised.

"Not that I've heard. How're you holding up, Sam?"

"We're fine," Sam replies quickly. "What about omens, signs, something like that? I think something big happened here, and we missed it."

"How big?"

There's a rustling of pages coming through the receiver, the scratch of a pen, clacking of keys on a keyboard; Bobby isn't wasting any time.

"I'm not sure. I don't know if you remember those psychics I saw here in Chinatown months ago – the one who wouldn't talk to me, and that other one I thought was full of it?"

"Vaguely; why?"

"Whatever happened seems to be localized in Chinatown; granted, Chicago is a big enough city, but we didn't see anything out of the ordinary anywhere else so far. That girl, the one I said was a fraud – someone or something's burned down her shop, and the other place, the no-tourists-allowed, that one's got every window full of police tape."

"I'll make some calls," Bobby promises. "What did you say her name was?"

"Grace Bai. Her boyfriend called her Gu Jing, so that's probably what's on the official papers, provided it's not an alias. Gu Jing Bai."

For a moment, there is silence on the other end, and when Bobby talks again, his voice is strained, steely.

"Are you absolutely sure that's her real name, and not something she is using to impress her clients?"

"Well, no, I'm not, I guess. What are you talking about?" Sam asks, and has to pull the phone a good five inches from his ear, because on the other end, Bobby is yelling.

"Goddammit, boy! Where the hell is your head? I expect this kind of crap from your brother, but not from you, Sam! I said I'd make some calls for ya, and I'll do that. But you get the hell out of Chinatown, and don't even think about going anywhere near there until I get back to you. You hear me?"

"Ok, ok, I hear you, but, Bobby, I don't understand, what's –"

"If Bai Gu Jing is that girl's real name, then she ain't no girl, Sam, she's a demon," Bobby barks into the phone. "I'll get back to ya."

"Hm," Sam tells the piece of plastic after he snaps it closed, "thanks, Bobby. That actually explains a lot."

***

Crouching behind the dumpster right there in the alleyway, away from prying eyes, Sam thumbs through his pocket until he finds Bai Gu Jing's card, holds it between his palms, considering.

He doesn't know if it will work. He's only ever done it once, right here in this very city, months ago that feel at once like a lifetime or a day; he can't tell anymore. It was an accident then, a frantic desire to locate the needle in the giant, buzzing haystack of Chicago, and he had wished and _reached_ and _found_ the demon in a crumbling factory building, and he had been too afraid to try it again, too drained and terrified by the visions to chance inviting one, too absorbed in –

Sam shakes his head, trying to ascertain how he feels about trying this now, and finds himself oddly comfortable with it. There is no fear left in him, not for something as ordinary as this. A vision, a headache, an answer; in the last few years, he's had more visions than he can reasonably count; what's one more headache now, if not a necessary casualty?

He presses the pads of his fingers against the ink of the card, and closes his eyes, focusing. The paper is smooth against his skin, smooth just like the leather couch in Bai Gu Jing's apartment. He calls up her smug little face, the porcelain bowl bloody on the coffee table, the tattooed boyfriend, Hu, changing the channels of the large television, sliding a box of band-aids into her grasp.

The images flicker and dissolve against his eyelids, replaced with new ones; _a pot of tea on a low table, delicate china cups and placemats for two, a pale hand reaching towards a smoking ashtray, ornate gold lettering on a lit-up sign_.

When Sam opens his eyes again, he _knows_.

He walks out of the alley and heads south, west, then south again, ducking into a little one-way street between two squat apartment buildings. He laughs when he sees the large neon letters, lit up golden on a restaurant sign, pulls the door open, a loud jingle of bells announcing his entrance.

His head doesn't hurt.

***

"Welcome to 'Journey to the West'. You have reservation? Or table for one," the hostess greets him, accent heavy between heart-shaped lips.

"I'm meeting someone," Sam says, glancing around. "She's about this tall, black hair, maybe goes by Grace?" The restaurant is empty save him and the hostess with her stack of laminated menus, but there are clanking noises coming from the kitchen, and a set of stairs behind a large wood-paneled screen leads to the second floor.

"No," the woman shakes her head, "nobody here called 'Grace'. Maybe you in wrong place. Maybe you go."

"I don't think so. She's here, and I'm betting you know exactly where. Upstairs, right?"

"Private," the hostess says sternly, pointing at the screen. "You have dinner, sit down here. Or you go."

Sam doesn't have the patience to bicker with the woman any longer. _"You will take me to Bai Gu Jing, now,"_ he pronounces, fixing her with his eyes, mouth moving with a deliberate certainty.

"Yes, of course. Follow me," she nods blankly, accent gone, and leads him behind the lacquered partition, up the narrow wooden stairs and into the private dining room beyond.

Grace Bai eyes him angrily from a corner table; there is a large pot of tea in front of her along with a smoking ashtray. Hu pushes aside a plate of half-eaten noodles, hooks an ankle around the leg of a third chair and yanks it towards his own seat.

"_Huang yan_ Sam, long time no see. Still the same _zhao shi zhe_ as ever, you and your _nu hui yuan_ Melchiresa, always going where you aren't invited. Sit. Have some tea," he says, opening his arms wide.

Sam takes the chair reluctantly, but doesn't accept a cup.

"Talk," he tells Grace, "right now. Tell me what I need to know, or I swear, I will send you back to hell where you belong."

Grace says nothing, but Hu chuckles, pours the tea with a steady hand, lights a fresh cigarette for himself.

"You've got a lot of nerve coming in here talking like that, Sam. Hell. If you think you can get the words out, be my guest. I'll save you the trouble, though; won't do a thing. We don't all operate by the same rules, you know. You Westerners, you may call us demons, but we aren't playing the same game. Our hells aren't your hells, although, in the grand scheme of things, we're… let's say, 'neighbors'. So, if you want to have yourself a nice, neighborly chat, Bai Gu Jing and I will gladly share a meal with you. And if not… well, suit yourself." He cocks his head expectantly, smiling with all of his white, sharp teeth; Sam notices that his hair is longer than the last time they met, pulled back into an orange tail with a length of black ribbon.

"I'm pretty fucking interested in why you're here at all," Grace interjects. "Don't remember you listening very well the first time we met, and you've got Agrat now, don't know why you'd even bother with us. Unless she isn't fucking telling you what you want to hear."

"Agrat? You mean Ruby?" Sam asks, sniffing carefully at the tea; it smells like jasmine, but mingled with the heavy scent of Hu's cigarette, it's not very appetizing.

"Ruby, Agrat, Lilith, Eisheth, Naamah, whatever she calls herself. Things like her, they have many different people call them many different names, not that it matters much in the end. She didn't tell you? Probably not; if she did, you wouldn't fucking be here. Daji! Daji, fetch more rice, and dumplings," Grace tells the hostess, takes a large gulp of her own cup and watches the woman retreat quickly down the stairs.

"Didn't even teach you to respect boundaries," she sourly addresses Sam again. "This city's been mine since before your father first shoved a hand up your mother's skirt. Old Yellow Eyes, he knew not to come onto my territory uninvited; shame he had to up and leave incompetent fucking bastards to run things in his place. The lot of you, no respect for a damn thing, not your family, not your fucking obligations, and not your fucking contracts. Thanks, Daji; do us a favor, lock the doors downstairs, would you?"

The hostess gives a little bow and backs away; Grace slides a sweet-smelling plate in Sam's direction.

"Here, these are good. Don't worry, nothing in them that shouldn't fucking be there; I know how to entertain guests properly, even uninvited ones."

Sam bites into the sticky bun cautiously, but it tastes fresh and sweet, and he swallows the rest, washing it down with some tea.

"There," Grace nods, "now you've eaten under my roof. Couldn't do a thing to harm you even if I wanted to; you know, tradition, honor, the whole fucking bit. Your brother, though, he is in my city, but hasn't broken bread with me. It's not a threat," she adds quickly, eyeing Sam's whitening knuckles. "You just keep it in mind while you say what you came here to say."

"I didn't exactly have a speech prepared," Sam grits out, taking a mental inventory of the weapons Dean has available to him at this very moment: the Colt and his knife are stashed under his pillow, easily within reach as soon as he's awake. Unfortunately, there is no telling when that might be; he was groggy and unresponsive all morning, and Sam left him with an extra blanket, a mug of coffee and a note on the bedside table.

"Shouldn't be very hard," Hu says, stubbing out the remainder of his cigarette. "What do you want from us? What are you willing to do for it? I'd start with those."

Sam considers the both of them for a minute, takes another sip of tea, pokes at the rice on his plate.

"Back then, you figured me out right away, didn't you?"

"I was mistaken right away," Grace smiles. "Thought you were fucking Yellow Eyes come back from the abyss until I had a taste of your blood. Blood never lies, and yours told me plenty," she says, reaching for the kettle. "Don't ask what, Sam. All I'm going to tell you is 'you already know the answer; you just need to reach in for it'. I have a soft spot for fortune cookie wisdom, especially when it happens to be right on the fucking button. Go ahead and ask me that other thing you're itching to ask me, instead; I can practically see it burning your tongue."

"Do you know how to help my brother?" Sam blurts out, shutting his eyes tight, hears a sharp intake of breath from Hu, followed by a little chuckle.

"You're asking me the same questions as last time, but somehow you think I'll have different answers? Granted, if you'd started listening back then, it might have been a little easier. Unlike you, Melchiresa certainly hasn't been wasting time, and she is a lot closer to holding that contract than she was ten months ago. Granted, in her case 'a lot closer' still means miles to go, but right now, she's definitely at the head of the race."

His eyelids are leaden as he tries to look up at Grace, and she gives him a sympathetic smile as he reaches back for the tea cup with shaking fingers.

"Meg is the one holding the marker."

"Not yet. Stop me when it starts to sound familiar – two children of the demon Azazel, fighting a war to win their father's house – any of that ringing a bell? She hasn't won yet, and that's with barely any real opposition, since her adversary's been running around the country, eating junk food and doing laundry and reading from the fucking gospels instead of putting up a fight."

"Ruby –"

"I hope your 'Ruby' can knock some sense into you, before it's too late," she interrupts. "Melchiresa is a fool. She is irrational, hot-headed, won't honor your father's promises. It is known. She doesn't have as much support as she ought to, which is why she is branching out – into my territory, into others' – in hopes that'll win her enough points. However, barring you, she has the best claim on picking up where Azazel left off. And from what I understand, she's hated your fucking guts since before she first laid eyes on you, even before daddy's master plan crashed and burned. So if you think there is any way to get your brother's soul out of her hands once she rules in Azazel's stead, then you are as much of a fucking fool as she is."

"You're saying my only option is to kill her."

Grace lifts up the lid of the kettle, inspects the contents with a wrinkle of her nose, and pours the remaining dregs of tea into her cup.

"I'm saying I know you're new to this, Sam, but when it comes to you and Melchiresa, my money's on you. Granted, you're not the firstborn, and you are a half-breed, but from what I hear, you were definitely daddy's favorite. So, go forth, mull it over, talk to Agrat, whatever it is you need to do – but do it quickly. What do you have, a little over a month before Dean's time runs out? Come back and see me once it's all done, and I will extend to you the same courtesies I extended to your father."

She stares directly at Sam, unblinking, and for a split second he thinks that there are only empty, bleached eye sockets where her eyes should be, but then she speaks again, each word echoing heavily in his skull.

_"Now, take your brother, and get the fuck out of my city."_

Sam runs down the stairs without being asked twice, the need to leave Chicago reverberating through his bones; it is unsafe here, for both him and Dean, they need to get out right away, while there is still time, while –

He can hear Daji, the hostess, laughing smugly behind him as she shuts and bolts the doors.

***

Dean isn't in the room when Sam barges in, calling his name; his bed is rumpled, but the mug of coffee has been emptied, and a couple of lines have been added to Sam's earlier note in Dean's quick, haphazard scrawl.

"Gone to check something out," he reads before crumpling up the note and throwing in the trash. "Well, that's nice and informative, Dean."

He presses the memory button on his phone, lets it ring until Dean's voicemail message is talking into his ear. Sam doesn't know when his brother changed the recording, but the words are both startlingly familiar and distinctly unpleasant in what they remind him of.

"You've reached Dean Winchester. I am unable to answer your call, but if it's an emergency, contact my brother Sam; he can help."

"You don't think I'm going to figure it out, do you," Sam whispers, hanging up. "You think you're going to die, and you're setting your fucking affairs in order, you asshole." The rest of his words are swallowed up in a thick yawn.

He is tired; he hasn't slept properly since New London, stopping only once for a quick nap in the car on the fourteen-hour drive. He eyes Dean's unmade bed longingly, imagines sinking into the soft mattress, wrapping himself in his brother's pillows and blankets, but the need to get out of the city is maddening, a phantom itch that he can't scratch. He tries Dean's cell two more times, pacing the room like the walls are forcing him in, stopping only to throw the few things he bothered unpacking back into his bag. He thinks he must have worn inches of paint and wood off of the floor, thick grooves shaped like footprints, when his phone finally rings.

"Where are you?" Dean asks, sounding a little out of breath.

"Back at the room; Dean, we need to –"

"We need to get the hell out of Dodge, dude. Can you be ready in about four minutes?"

 

**Defiance, OH**

Dean guns the engine for over three hours, without any regard for speed limits or directions, turning east and south and east again, road after nameless back road coiling and twisting ahead. Sam doesn't protest, Bai Gu Jing's command gripping him tight and leaving no room for anything else except for a bone-deep weariness. On a couple of occasions when Dean slows down for the sharper curves, Sam finds himself pressing his feet into the floor of the car, hard, as if that can somehow spur it on, bring the needle back up to seventy five or eighty.

Each time, there is no clutch or gas pedal under the soles of his sneakers, just the slick rubber of the floor mat, and understanding sparks briefly through his skull – the will to run is not his own. He wants to ask Dean if he hears it, too, the itchy buzz of the demon's voice, if that is why his hands clutch at the wheel with determination, why he flicks his eyes from mirror to mirror and turns onto yet another side road, but the small flashes of clarity sputter out in the whine of the wind, the hiss of tires on pavement. Sam is too tired to think of anything else, even as they get farther and farther away and the push and prod of Bai Gu Jing's voice stretches and weakens; he mouths the first few words of a massive blue 'Welcome to Ohio' billboard to himself, but his eyes close before he can read the state governor's name off the sign.

"Hey, Sammy, work with me here, man," he hears, feels Dean's hands on his shoulders, pulling and shaking. The car isn't moving, and when he opens his eyes, he sees parking spaces and bright teal doors with crooked brass numbers, his brother leaning into the open car door, trying to pull Sam awake and out. Dean's jacket hangs unbuttoned over the black and blue plaid of his shirt. This close, Sam can see a small tear in the flannel, the peek of white tee underneath; can smell the mix of laundry soap and salt and the slightly musty, metallic scent of the canvas jacket – Dean hasn't worn it in a while, must have just pulled it out of the trunk this morning. This close, Sam thinks, isn't nearly close enough.

Dean yanks at his arm again, and Sam goes with it, pitches forward into his brother's chest, grunts a muffled "too tired" into the warm cloth under his mouth. He brings up a heavy hand, lets it fall against Dean's ribcage, feels the seam of the shirt pocket under his palm. He drags it down lazily, counts Dean's ribs one by one under the cloth and skin and muscle.

"Not helping, Sam," Dean groans, and the vibration runs through his sternum, reverberates into Sam's cheek, still pressed into his brother's body. "Come on, you're too heavy for me to lift." He keeps on talking, something about the flu he must have picked up and passed on to Sam, "one of those one-day, wear-you-out things you just need to sleep off, I guess," and Sam feels a thick canvas sleeve brush the top of his head, followed by the light scratch of Dean's fingers into his hair and down as he tries to feel his forehead.

"Can't tell if you have a fever; come on, you can pass back out in the room, just help me get you in there."

Sam almost blurts out that there is no flu; his own tiredness is the result of not sleeping for two days, and the toll of the vision he forced finally catching up with him, and Dean's tiredness had an even simpler, if not easier, explanation, but catches himself in time. Instead, he inhales noisily and lifts his head, lets his brother help him up and walk him into the motel room, obediently stretching out on the bed farthest from the door.

Dean keeps fussing, pulling things out of bags, running water in the bathroom sink; Sam hears the dull clink of plastic against plastic, the rattle of what must be pills in a bottle.

"I'm putting the aspirin right there on the nightstand, there's the water if you need more," Dean says, and Sam opens his eyes again just in time to see him tuck his gun back into his jacket.

"I'm gonna go move the car. You should be ok in here, I won't be long – just don't want her seen from the road."

"Where are we," Sam mouths hoarsely, reaching for the water, but Dean beats him to it, presses the bottle into Sam's outstretched hand, unscrews the cap.

"Defiance, Ohio," he says as Sam takes a swallow, "I think we're good for now – I'm pretty fucking sure I lost them, but they'll track us back down soon enough, and it'd be really helpful if you were bright-eyed and bushy-tailed by then."

"Who," Sam wants to ask, "lost who," but his eyes are falling closed again, Dean's words swirling and twisting together, catching on each other's sharp corners. He feels the bottle of water being slid out of his hand, then brief cold on his feet as deft fingers untie and pull off his sneakers. A scratchy motel blanket is settled over him, and then the door thuds against the frame twice, Dean leaving, Dean coming back in; there must be some minutes between the twin door slams, but he is asleep before he can figure out how many.

***

He dreams of his old apartment in Palo Alto, Jess brewing jasmine tea in a delicate porcelain kettle they never owned. Her mouth is painted a bright, brilliant red, and her soft blond hair curls around Sam's fingers as he pulls her close.

_"Don't get me wrong," she says, tilting her face up to his, "I do love a tall man, but it's the whole Antichrist thing that's really keeping the romance alive."_

She is naked and pliant under his hands, her skin so pale against her black and blue flannel shirt, and she lets him undo the buttons, one by one, count the ribs underneath her freckles, the smell of laundry soap and salt heavy in his nostrils.

"What are you doing here?" he asks as she pulls him down to the floor, flips him easily and straddles his hips, her jacket undone over a flat, smooth chest, and she laughs, tossing back her head, hair short and spiky over crinkled green eyes, jabs him in the ribs with a thick, ringed finger.

"Looking for a beer," Dean says, shrugging off both jacket and flannel with a smooth twist of his shoulders, "but beer can wait."

He leans down, running his tongue over his lower lip, swollen and glistening with saliva, and their mouths meet, teeth clacking together and the musty, metallic taste of blood shared between them.

"Thought you were Yellow Eyes fuckin' come back from the abyss until I had a taste of your blood, Sammy," Dean confides with a smile. He reaches for the tea pot, fumbles with the handle as Jess sets out a small porcelain bowl. "Pick a finger. Ring's best, or thumb."

"Lilith can pick for me," Sam says, and Dean frowns, brows drawn together in confusion.

"You mean Ruby?" he asks, pouring thick, red tea into the bowl.

"Ruby, Agrat, Naamah, Eisheth, Lilith, it doesn't matter what she calls herself. Do you know what she told me?"

Dean nods, pulling the bloody bowl to his mouth, lapping delicately at the tea within.

"When this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: death is swallowed up in victory. You think there's something to it?"

"Of course, he does," Jess interjects, dipping a finger into the bowl; when she brings it out again, Dean licks at the sticky red staining her skin. "Blood never lies, remember? Do you know what yours said, Sam?"

"No," he tells her, but she only laughs, pillow-rumpled blond curls snaking down to her shoulders.

"Of course, you do. You already know the answer, Samael; you just need to reach and take it." There is something off in the way she pronounces his name, almost like she just misspoke and corrected herself halfway through. "Come on upstairs, it's Dean's bedtime."

He follows her up the steps, the hem of her long white nightgown trailing behind her, watches her lean over the bed, press her soft lips to Dean's forehead.

"Mom," he calls, but she holds a finger against her mouth as she shuts the door to Dean's room behind her.

"Shh, he's finally asleep," she whispers, but she isn't talking to him; John Winchester's hands are pulling at her shoulders, tugging her down the dark, silent hall; when he leans in to kiss his wife's mouth, Sam sees his eyes flash yellow.

He doesn't watch them; he won't, he can't, his yellow-eyed father undoing the little mother-of-pearl buttons on Mary's nightgown, her hands tangled in his dark hair. Sam closes his eyes, and when he opens them again, his mother is stretched out in the bed, sipping at a little porcelain cup of jasmine tea. John's shadowy hand is stroking at the thin white fabric of her nightgown, tight over her swollen, heavy belly.

"No sorrow, save in the darkness of the womb of her by whom came evil," Azazel whispers through his father's mouth, "not my firstborn and a half-breed to boot, but you were always my favorite." He cocks his head, trailing a finger across Mary's middle, and the room explodes into hot, brilliant flame.

Sam yells; Sam struggles. He beats away at the hands that tug him down the stairs, through the smoke and the crackling heat, into twisting hallways and slamming doors, deep into the laughing yellow of his father's eyes, down, down, and down until he is screaming himself hoarse, until his throat hurts more than his charred, blistered flesh.

Through the fire, someone is calling.

"Sam. Sam!"

He pitches forward into the voice, falls into salty skin, the hands coming around him again, deceptively gentle, stroking his burnt shoulders, his snarled, tangled hair. He rails against the touch, pushes and claws and twists, trying to get away, but the hands don't let go. Someone is rocking him, petting him, "it's me, it's just me, Sammy, I've gotcha, come on, stop it, stop it, wake up, Sam – "

"Sam!"

He sags into the suddenly familiar arms wrapped around him, feels the frantic pounding of heartbeat pressed against his forehead. Dean smells like sleep and sweat, but his breaths are harsh, winded; Sam lifts up his head and exhales noisily, the motel room winking into focus all around him. It's dark, only a few slivers of moonlight piercing through the half shaded window, limning the top of his brother's head in pale, fractured light.

"Hey," Dean says hoarsely, lifting a tentative hand off of Sam's shoulder. A sharp click later, the bedside lamp is flooding the room with harsh, bright yellow.

"Hey," Sam repeats, blinking; Dean's face is only inches away, his eyes huge and safely green beneath worried, furrowed brows. In the lamplight, he can see the fresh bruise forming across Dean's skin, mottling into the hollow where neck meets shoulder. Dean's lower lip is beginning to swell, a small trickle of red staining his chin; he tongues at it gently, wincing.

"Did I do that?" Sam asks, even though he already knows the answer, the struggle and the burn of his dream bleeding out of him and onto his brother.

"Thought my jaw was gonna pop out of socket," Dean half-smiles, lifting a hand to feel at his chin, and then his expression turns serious again. "Are you ok?"

Five or six different and entirely inappropriate answers to that question flash through Sam's mind, and he almost laughs at the absurdity of it all. Waking up cradled to his brother's naked chest after nearly breaking his jaw in his sleep; he's ok as ok can be.

_Brother?_ his mind supplies, equally unhelpful. _What color were_ his _father's eyes, Samael?_

Dean absently runs his fingers through his sleep-mussed hair.

"Sam, if I ask you what that was all about, you're not gonna tell me, are you," he states with a sigh. "I mean, I get that it was real bad, whatever it was, and don't bother sayin' it was just a nightmare. I know when you're lying."

I bet you do, Sam thinks bitterly, but Dean doesn't stop talking.

"Whatever it is. Whatever. You know you don't have to lie to me about it. Sammy, it's me. You know there is nothing you can say or do that'll make me – that'll – ah, hell, you know what I mean," Dean finishes in exasperation, looks down at the ugly flowered bedspread like it's the most fascinating thing in the world.

Sam's heart gives one quick painful thump, fluttering against his ribs like a trapped bird. There is nothing he can say to Dean about the vision, about what Bai Gu Jing told him earlier, about yellow eyes and yellow dreams full of smoke and hellfire. But there is something else.

"There is nothing I can't say or do?" he says hoarsely, barely recognizing his own voice. "Really? Are you sure about that, Dean?"

There is that half-smile, half-wince twisting Dean's lips again; he lifts his head, lets his eyes, safe and green, meet Sam's.

"Anything you need," he breathes out softly, and screws up his face once more. "You know I'm fucking terrible at this serious talk thing, but –"

"Shut up, then," Sam whispers decisively, leaning forward, and presses his mouth to Dean's.

For just a moment, fractions of fractions of a second, his brother presses back, lips chapped and hot, the sharp metallic taste of his blood shared between them. His tongue flicks out, drags wetly across Sam's, asking him in, and Sam takes the invitation, brings a hand around to pull Dean closer, and feels him go rigid under the touch.

"Sam, what the fuck?" Dean moans, muffled, into his mouth. "Are you out of your mind?"

He holds onto Dean tightly, bracing himself for a shove as he bites down onto his swollen, broken lip, tastes blood again with a savage satisfaction.

"Anything I need, isn't that what you just told me?"

Dean doesn't push at him or try to pull away; he shivers in Sam's grasp, lets his head drop onto Sam's shoulder.

"I didn't mean this," he responds in a small, broken voice, hiding in the crook between Sam's shoulder and throat. "Sam, goddammit, we're…"

"I didn't catch that," Sam tells him, even though he knows the words Dean is breathing into his skin, listens to him repeat, "We're brothers."

"Yeah, there's always that," he says wistfully, wrapping his hands around Dean's shoulders and pulling him up. _Brothers_."You think I've suddenly forgotten?"

His fingers are digging into Dean's flesh, hard enough to make more fresh bruises bloom there come morning. The thought of it, his brother marked up black and blue in the shape of Sam's hands, pulses hot and sharp in his stomach, and he reaches for Dean's lips again, licks a little wet path inside.

Dean is shaking against him, making soft little whimpers that get lost on his tongue, fade down his throat. Sam sucks on his mouth greedily, maps out every dip and every curve, traces the lines of his teeth, rests for a moment against the crooked edge of a chipped incisor Dean's never bothered getting fixed.

Finally pulling his mouth free, he strokes a gentle finger down Dean's arm as he whispers into his brother's ear, listens for the tell-tale little hitches in his breath.

"You aren't really trying to tell me 'no', are you? When was the last time you said 'no' to anyone, Dean?" He leans over to Dean's other ear, stops to nip lightly at his jaw, runs his tongue up to the earlobe, tasting salt and rough warmth. "You don't have to lie to me about it; I know exactly what goes on in that head of yours."

"Yeah?" Dean echoes dully, and Sam nods, reaching down with a sure hand until he finds exactly what he expects.

"Look at that," he laughs softly, palming his brother's cock through his boxers. "You're so hard already. So fucking easy. Want me. Want this."

Dean's whole body convulses like he's been struck by lighting, and this time Sam is completely unprepared for the hard, sharp shove that follows. He rubs a hand against the painful mark of Dean's fingers blossoming on his chest, watches Dean scoot away to the foot of the bed.

Anger flares up a hungry head inside him, wraps around the desperation already flowing though his bloodstream. Will from Palo Alto. Shannon from Belvedere. Nameless guys in Nevada, nameless women in every goddamn state under the sun. Lisa fucking Braeden and her impossibly flexible limbs; motes of bright yellow light burn through his vision, and he blinks, clears them away as he stares at his brother, willing him to sit still on his end of the narrow motel bed.

"You don't get to say 'no' to me, Dean," he says quietly, enunciating every word. "Not anymore. Not after everyone else's gotten a piece of you. How many of them even remember your name? How many of them will remember it a month and a half from now, huh? You think this is easy for me, seeing you giving it up for anyone who even looks at you, 'oh, this is my last chance, oh, I don't have much time left, oh, I need this'? Well, I need this, too. How many chances do I have left?" His voice rises in pitch and volume, until he is yelling out the words, strangled breaths catching in his throat. "I don't care if it's fucked up. Maybe I did, months ago. I don't have time to worry about fucked up now, and neither do you."

He is still wearing his jeans and tee shirt from earlier, Dean having put him to bed without taking off much aside from his shoes; Sam remedies that now, quickly yanks the shirt over his head, undoes his zipper.

"Don't you fucking dare tell me you don't want this," he finishes, resting his palms on his denim-covered thighs.

Dean's expression is unreadable, unflinching; Sam may as well be yelling into empty air, having a discourse with the fucking lamp for all the effect it's having.

"Ok," Dean says suddenly, softly, fisting his hands into the blanket. "Ok. Alright. You really want this? Ok, Sammy. You can – ok."

"Say it louder," Sam demands, watches his brother re-shape the word with his red, swollen mouth.

"I said 'ok', Sam."

"That's what I thought," he grits out, sitting back on his haunches, and points at Dean's boxer shorts. "You can take those off now."

Dean gets up, hooks his fingers into the waistband and slides the shorts down his legs. Silently, he folds them up and sets them on his own bed, shifts from foot to bare foot as he stands there, naked except for the dark line of a bracelet around his wrist, his amulet on its leather cord at his throat. Freckles and scars and bruises stand out against his skin, outlined in harsh, yellow lamplight, and Sam runs his eyes up and down hungrily, bites into the inside of his cheek to keep himself steady as he pulls his own jeans and underwear all the way down.

"Any other orders you wanna give me?" Dean says, pulling a smirk over his face. Sam knows that smirk, that mask, Dean's first line of defense against anything he doesn't understand, anything that he can't shoot or punch or… well.

"What do you want me to do now?" Dean grins again, shiny and forced, stretching his arms out to the sides. "Want me to jack you off? Suck your cock? Been told I'm pretty good at that, baby brother." He narrows his eyes, runs his tongue across his mouth, corner to corner. "Maybe you wanna fuck me? Is that it?"

He turns around, bare feet slapping against cold floor as he walks over to his bag, rummages inside briefly, coming up with a small plastic tube, gets back on the bed and presents it for Sam's inspection. "Here. You'll probably want this."

Just like that, the anger winks out of Sam like a dying candle. He stares at the little tube Dean is pressing into his hands, unable to string the letters on the side into any cohesive order. He closes his eyes, letting the plastic container drop to the bed with a dull thump, and he knows they aren't doing this. He isn't doing this. He is going to count to ten, slowly, carefully, brand each number into the inside of his eyelids, into his tongue until it burns, and then he is going to open his mouth and his eyes and make Dean forget. _This isn't real. Never happened. You're dreaming, big brother, go back to sleep._

In the morning, it'll just be a piece of a nightmare, flimsy and faded in the sun, and eventually Dean will forget even that; he will make sure of it.

_Four. Five. Six. Seven. _

He is going to cover Dean with the motel blanket, and then he is going to lock the bathroom door and turn on the shower and think of nothing as he wraps his own fingers around his hard, aching dick.

Sam gets all the way to nine before he hears the snick of the cap, the wet sound of the tube being squeezed, feels the bed shift. He opens his eyes just in time to see Dean's glistening palm hovering gracelessly over his lap. His brother's face is pure concentration; mouth scrunched up into a tight line, only the tip of his tongue flicking out to taste the air.

"Fuck," he thinks he says as Dean drags slippery fingers over the head of Sam's dick, fists a tight circle and slides it down, once, twice. Dean's hand on him, hell, Dean's hand on him, slicking him up wet and hot, and he frantically starts his count over, two, three, four, the pounding of his pulse drowning out the numbers.

"Don't you fucking pussy out on me now, Sammy," Dean hisses, eyes narrowed, squeezing out more lube with his free hand. He lets go of Sam and leans back, braces himself against the bed and spreads his legs apart, his own cock hard and heavy between them. Sam can only watch, breath catching in his throat, as Dean brings his slick, dripping fingers in close, lets them trail up the inside of his thigh, leaving a wet shimmer in their wake.

"Isn't this what you needed?" Dean asks, circling one finger lazily around his balls and then into the crease below, slipping it inside with a soft grunt. "Isn't this where you want to be?"

Sam's want is a clawing, twisting thing rising out of the bottomless pit of his stomach; a seven-headed beast trashing inside him, trickling poison through his veins, and he doesn't think he can control it for much longer.

"Stop," he rasps, regaining his voice, "you need to stop, tell me to stop," but Dean shakes his head, pushes a second finger in alongside the first.

"Don't wanna," he drawls out as he stretches himself open. He clamps his teeth down over his lip, sweat beading his unshaven face, and Sam can hardly sit still, watching his brother's long, graceful fingers slide and twist between his thighs.

"Come here," Dean says, arching his back. "Come on, Sammy; you don't get to say 'no' to me. Not anymore."

He falls onto Dean like he's been wandering the desert, every tissue parched with thirst, and Dean is an oasis, cool breeze and water, finally, fucking finally, and he leans in to suck at Dean's bloodied lip again, just to make sure he's not a mirage. Has to make sure, has to break through the brash mask of devil-may-care over his brother's face, press his fingers against the bruises on Dean's chest and hear him moan.

"Except I shall put my finger into the print of the nails and thrust my hand into his wounds, I will not believe," he mutters, feels the press of Dean's dick, blood-hot and hard against his stomach, the slippery slide of lube below.

"What?" Dean breathes out, canting his hips up, and Sam says, "Nothing," hands closing over Dean's hipbones, his cock nudging at Dean's hole, and slowly pushes in.

It's tight, unbearable heat, it's so good it almost hurts; it's everything he's wanted for days, weeks, months.

"Mine," he growls, grabbing haphazardly at a wrist, a shoulder, a bicep, running his nails down the sweat-slick stretch of Dean's belly, dipping into his navel, scratching down into the bristle of hair beneath. His fingers brush against his brother's – Dean's got a hand wrapped around his own cock and Sam slaps it away, tightens his fingers possessively, smirking in satisfaction as Dean cries out at the touch. A twist of his wrist, a few hard strokes, and Dean moans, "fuck, just like that, Sam, hmm, yeah," and just like that, Sam knows he has him. Dean wants him; Dean wants this, and everything in him surges with needy, primal joy. He moves his hand faster, snaps his hips harder against Dean's, the heat and the friction almost too much. Dean is writhing under him, pushing back viciously, like he wants to swallow Sam whole, his breath coming in sharp, noisy gasps.

He leans down, presses in close, traps Dean's lip between his own.

"Sam, Sammy, oh, _Christ_," Dean gasps into his mouth, and for a moment, Sam doesn't understand why it makes him shudder, why it burns all the way down his throat and sinks into his belly like a lead weight, hard enough to break something inside him. He reels from the pain, pulling back from Dean's lips, his world tinged in gold, and through the yellow haze, he sees his brother falling apart.

"Dean?" he ventures, the pain dulling down; they are still stuck together, the smell of sweat and lube sharp and heavy in his nostrils.

"No," Dean whispers, "no, you're dead," his eyes wide, dark and terrified pupils trailing over Sam's face, "god, no!"

This time, the "Christo" out of his mouth is deliberate, but it burns just the same, and Sam _understands_.

"It's ok, it's alright, it's me, just me," he says quickly, knows he is babbling, but Dean has to understand. "I'm not – I figured it out, Dean, don't –"

"Vade retro, Satana," Dean grits out, and Sam has to admit, that for all his posturing, his brother really does have extraordinary reaction time, because his hand is already reaching back under the pillow, grasping for his knife. Sam allows himself a brief moment to contemplate Dean's face when he remembers they are on Sam's bed, and there is no knife or gun within easy reach.

"I shoulda known it wasn't him; Sam would've never let me – let me," Dean almost chokes on the words. "I don't know how the fuck it's possible for you to be alive. But I've killed you once already. And I'm going to get you out of my brother if it's the last thing I do, you son of a bitch."

"_Relax,_" Sam says softly, before Dean can fight him off, watches the tight coil of Dean's body slacken, his head slump back onto the pillow. He braces himself against the bed and pulls back, his dick coming free of Dean with an obscene squelch; when he looks back down, Dean's eyes are wet, and the noises coming out of his bleeding mouth make Sam feel like nothing human.

"_Be quiet, Dean,_" he commands, and just like that, Dean's mouth is still moving, but his tongue works soundlessly between his reddened lips. Sam can't resist rubbing the pad of his thumb over the moisture there, pulling back just in time to avoid the snap of his brother's teeth.

"It's ok," he says again, stroking his thumb over a familiar cheekbone. "It's me. I'm not – possessed." He stumbles over the word, calms himself by tracing little warm circles over Dean's cheek. "Dean, your deal – I know how to break it now. I know, I really should have thought of it sooner, it's so fucking simple. It's just Melchiresa – Meg, we just have to get rid of Meg, and you're home free. Dean. You can – I'm sorry, _you can talk now_," he adds quickly, "I'm sorry for doing that to you, the mind control; I didn't mean to, it was just so I could explain without you attacking me – fuck, Dean! Dean!"

Dean doesn't seem to be listening; his eyes are screwed up tight, and his lips are still working through words too quiet for Sam to pick up. He leans in, hands never leaving Dean's face, cocks his head and tries to hear.

"...spiritus immundus," Dean is whispering, "omnis incursio… incursio adversarii, omne phantasma, omnis legio, legio… omnis legio, oh, god, omnis legio," and the words feel like pins and needles over Sam's skin.

"Damn it, Dean, look at me, _stop it_," he yells, lacing his voice with the compulsion again, "just listen to me, it's me, fucking _look at me_, that's right, that's good, come on, look at me, Dean!"

Obediently, his brother lifts his head from the pillow, eyelashes fluttering up, but there is no safety left in the green of his eyes. Sam can see the muscles of his neck working, corded tight – he is trying to turn his head aside, but can't, his body dutifully carrying out Sam's command to look and listen.

"I've been searching. I've been looking for the whole damn year, and so has Ellen, and so has Bobby. Do you know how many people I've seen, how many so-called witches and psychics and seers and sorcerers, and not a one of them had a damn thing to offer that would keep you with me."

Sam pauses to catch his breath, run his hands through his sweat-damp hair. The heat has leeched from the room, and he feels clammy, chilled to the bone; he looks down to see Dean's naked arms and shoulders covered in gooseflesh. "_Lie back and don't move,_" he orders Dean again, just in case, and fetches the blanket and pillow from the other bed, settles down next to his brother, pulls the blanket over them both. It feels better, pressing himself into Dean's side, whispering into his ear, close and together.

"You don't understand now, but you will. I know you will. I can't lose you, Dean. I don't care what it takes anymore. If it will save you, if it'll keep you with me, I will do anything. I'll turn hell and heaven and earth inside out, I'll pay any price. And this one, Dean, this is hardly paying. Meg, she's got it in for us anyway, you think she'll stop once she's got you? I've seen it. I know I haven't been telling you as much as I should have, and I'm sorry. But I've seen what happens, I've seen what's going to have to happen between me and her, only it took me this long to understand exactly what it is I've been seeing."

He is warmer now, the blanket scratchy and unpleasant, but Dean's stopped shivering, just lies there, taking in every word.

"You're mine, Dean, and you're going to live. She can't have you."

He can hear the leaky faucet in the bathroom, droplets of water hitting the tub; Dean's raspy breaths sneak in between the drops, one little plink after another.

The warmth is stifling him; he pulls at the blanket angrily, feels it snag on something over Dean's chest and yanks harder, stares dumbly at the offending piece of jewelry hanging from Dean's neck. The little bull-man glints gold against purpling bruises, horns like hooks, and his brother flinches, _fucking flinches_ when Sam runs his fingers over the metal.

"I gave this to you," he says, twisting the amulet between his fingers. The leather cord tightens slightly around the base of Dean's throat, and Sam gives it another twist before letting go, watches the dark pink line it made on Dean's skin. "I gave it to you, and you don't ever take it off," he says, tracing the mark with his hand even as it fades back into white. "Dean. I won't let anyone have you, and you know it. And I'm sorry, but I can't let you remember tonight like this."

He kneels up next to Dean, fixes his eyes on his brother's face, and wraps his hand around his softened cock.

"I'm sorry," Sam repeats, calling up everything inside him to shape the words. "_Forget. Forget what you think you saw, Dean. It was nothing, it was just me,_" he coos, stroking his brother until his eyes go glassy and he is hard again between Sam's palms.

His movements are practiced, mechanical, and so are his words as they imprint themselves into Dean's mind, "_Forget. Forget. Forget,_" and Dean comes with a weak, pained moan, spilling quick and bitter into Sam's hands.

***

"What color are my eyes, Dean?" he asks sleepily, burrowing in against Dean's side, and his brother frowns.

"What the hell kind of question is that?"

"A stupid one," Sam smiles, stretches out with a thick, fake yawn. "_Go to sleep now,_" he says, and scans the room for his clothes; the night is almost gone, and he has work to do.

***

He starts with the names, methodically typing them into search fields. Rameel, Gadriel, Belial, Azazel, there is too much and not enough at the same time. Sam wonders how much humans have ever really known about hell or heaven, and how many pages spout assumptions and conjectures, bits and pieces of real information sprinkled in between.

_Belial is the false messiah who will lead man into error by his miraculous powers at the time when a woman rules over the world. Also see Samael, Antichrist, Seir_, he repeats to himself, but doesn't bother clicking the links.

He pushes aside the laptop and leafs through Bobby's notes instead, a thick envelope with priority mail stickers ripping off of the side. The notes themselves are neatly organized, information from different sources marked in colored ink; _Samael_, he reads the red letters, something from the medieval texts, _appears as a serpent with the face of a fierce lion_. An arrow leads to a footnote in black ink, _even at the creation of the world he was Lucifer reborn_. Sam flips back to the first page, where Bobby has painstakingly rendered the key to the color coding; black is for Kabbalistic texts, red for the Ars Goetia, Weir's studies, the Malleus Maleficarum. Green is for modern interpretations like Davidson, Wilson and Crowley, blue for Bobby's own deductions, _many interchanging names across the centuries; Malkira a possible variation on Melchiresa, or another name for Satan, unclear; sam means poison, el stands for god, angel, Hebrew?_

He skips several pages ahead, reads the black ink passages on Lilith, Naamah, Eisheth Zenunim, compares them to the treatises in red and green. _And the demon Samael took Lilith as his bride, and her sisters with her_, more of Bobby's footnotes suggesting other names, other books, other languages.

He doesn't have time for this.

Sam puts the notes back into their manila envelope, slips the envelope into the zippered pocket of his bag. In his unmade bed, Dean snores lightly, the spare pillow clutched against his stomach, blanket pushed down around his legs. His mouth is still darkly swollen, and there are more bruises than Sam remembers purpling his ribs, trailing over his hip and under the sheets. He doesn't know what Dean is going to remember in the morning, has no way of checking exactly what worked until Dean wakes and either reads him more of the Rituale Romanum, kisses him stupid or pretends nothing's happened.

The door creaks traitorously as he steps out into the parking lot, and the keys jingle, but Dean doesn't stir, his face smooth and lax and free of worry. Sam doesn't go far, sits down on the asphalt next to their parking space, leans his back against the cold metal of the car, and closes his eyes.

_Ruby_, he thinks, _Eisheth_, _Agrat bat Mahlat_, _Lilith_, _Naamah_; Bai Gu Jing had called her all of these things where Bobby's books had named them sisters. He conjures up her freshly made-up face, her soft, golden hair, seeks out with his mind like he did in Chicago to find Bai Gu Jing and Hu.

The images don't come. A light at the edge of the parking lot flickers, followed by another and then another still. Thunder rumbles in the distance, dull and faint, and the air feels harsh, hot, charged with electricity in anticipation of the coming storm. He presses harder, thinks of her back in the diners in Indiana, in Ohio, fingers wrapped around his wrist, nails poised to sink into his skin.

The motel sign extinguishes with a sudden buzz, and Sam scans the lot, certain he'll see her walking up, listens for the click of her heels on the pavement. The sign flicks back on, off, on, no vacancies limned in neon red, but the parking lot's as empty as it was before.

His head is beginning to feel heavy, but there is no pain, only an overwhelming want to lie down. Back in the room, he watches Dean's chest rise and fall, traces a hand down Dean's bare warm thigh before leaning down to grab his discarded blanket. He'll only settle in for a few minutes, he thinks, staring at the glow of the bedside alarm. Sam pulls off jeans and tee shirt, stretches out against Dean's back, presses his mouth to the bony jut of Dean's spine.

He doesn't open his eyes again until morning.

***

Sam wakes to pale sunlight and an empty bed, Dean's pillow and his own mashed underneath his cheek. The room is empty; nobody in the other bed or in the shower, but Dean's bag is still sitting on the desk next to his, and the car is in its parking space when he checks out of the window.

There is no freshly chalked devil's trap on the ceiling or floor, and he hasn't been cuffed to the bed frame, but Sam doesn't stop fretting until he hears footsteps outside of the door, the scrape of keys in the lock. He can barely breathe as Dean pushes into the room, the smell of coffee and hash browns wafting up from the cardboard tray in his hands.

"Morning, princess," Dean pronounces in a cheery voice, sliding their bags to the floor to make room for the coffee. "Come get it before it gets cold."

It's like that, then; Dean doesn't remember anything. That can't be right, Sam tells himself after a moment. Surely even Dean would question waking up naked in sticky sheets, dead weight of half-dressed baby brother flush against his back. He didn't mean for it to happen, was going to clean them up, move back to the other bed, be up before Dean, for fuck's sake, but all he can do now is grab the proffered hot paper cup and wrapper full of greasy potato.

"Ketchup right over there," Dean points to the tray, where indeed, lie little grey packets with bright red tomatoes printed on the front.

Sam rips the packet open with his teeth, gets another, squirts ketchup liberally over his breakfast and takes a large bite. He stares at Dean as he chews, following the potato with a swig of the coffee – two creams, four sugars, a dark, thick roast. It's not like he can ask Dean what he's thinking; _say, did you and I… last night, you know?_ At least Dean doesn't look as exhausted as he did in Chicago; he must be getting better at the sleep command, less heavy-handed, more precise.

Maybe he could ask. Put a bit of the voice into it, _what do you remember about last night_ followed up with a _forget I said anything_, but it feels wrong somehow, a little too much to consider. Sam is no expert, but he doesn't think that so much forgetting could be good for Dean, either; he knows he isn't as good with that as he'd like.

"You're freaking out," Dean says mournfully, setting down his coffee cup. There's a smear of ketchup on his lower lip, and he licks it up before saying anything else, pink agile tongue swiping back and forth.

"You're not?" Sam asks, tension coiling through him like a spring, ready to pop, and Dean half-smiles, shakes his head at the floor.

"I, uh, might have. A little. On the way to get coffee. Fuck, this is awkward," he takes another taste of his coffee and pushes it aside.

"Last night," Sam starts, and Dean reaches out, grabs his wrist between both of his hands.

"Do we have to talk about it? God, you're nodding; why are you nodding?"

"Dean," he says, and trust Dean to take the utterance of his name as an invitation; his brother leans in and presses their mouths together.

It's a sloppy, wet kiss, full of coffee and the heavy aftertaste of the hash browns and Sam's morning breath; he doesn't think Dean's brushed his teeth either as his tongue slides against lip and teeth, traces along his mouth possessively before pulling back. It's fucking perfect; it's more than Sam could have wished for, sitting in the parking lot last night, waiting for answers that never came.

"Stop thinking so damn much, Sammy," Dean says, leaning back, and Sam does, pushes down his memory of Dean's terrified eyes, his hands reaching for the knife under the pillow, and locks it up tight.

***

He lets Dean have first shower, but follows him into the bathroom to brush his teeth, sets up his shaving kit over the sink. After a few minutes, Dean pulls aside the curtain and silently motions Sam in, splashing water all over the floor. Later, when they get out, Sam slips in the puddle and nearly falls, grabbing at the towel bar to steady himself and bending it nearly in half in the process.

"Nah, they won't notice," Dean reassures him, draping an extra washcloth right down the dip in the center. "Fuck 'em, we aren't paying extra for that. The mattress was lumpy, and the water was barely even warm."

Sam thinks the water was fine, sluicing over Dean's back, painting glistening stripes over Dean's chest and belly as he rubbed up against his hip, wrapped his hand around Dean's dick in long, lazy strokes. Dean's hand on him moved in counterpoint, slick with soap, getting him from half-hard to wanting and needing in just a few seconds, and their mouths crushed together again, teeth and toothpaste and wet heat. He came almost embarrassingly quickly, days of pent up wait and want splashing over Dean's hand and swirling down with the water.

"Right," he says, buttoning up his shirt, threading his belt through the loops of his jeans. "And the water pressure was shitty."

***

Dean turns serious in the car, shifting into gear with the radio far too quiet.

"We need to put some space between us and here, fast. I didn't see anything weird earlier, but I wouldn't put it past them to be catching up as we speak."

"Who?" Sam asks, rolling down his window, taking a full breath of light spring air.

"Remember Gordon Walker? I ran into him in Chicago, him and a couple of other crazies he's got hanging on his every word. It didn't go very well."

"Gordon? I thought he was still in Pendleton."

"Yeah, well. I don't know if he got paroled or got out on his own initiative, but he sure hasn't changed much. Didn't even say hello before he took a shot at me, and I'm pretty convinced that's gonna be on his agenda until he stops missing. Just kept screaming to his guys that if I was there, the Antichrist wasn't too far behind, either."

"Good to know he thinks so highly of me," Sam mutters, examining his nails. He's worried the thumbnail on his left hand down to the quick, jagged and sharp. "Relax. I – we – can handle Gordon Walker."

 

**Springboro, PA**

They stop for the night in a little motel just off the main stretch of blacktop in a town with the hopeful name of Springboro, and eat greasy fried rice and orange chicken in front of the dully flickering television.

Dean's restless; fidgety. They parked the car behind the building rather than in front, the door is locked and chained and the beds aren't directly in line of sight through the lone grimy window, but still he gets up and paces, peeks through the curtains into the lot outside, watches the headlights passing on the road. Sam is of half a mind to tell him to just stop worrying and go to sleep already when the TV flashes brief static and the bathroom light buzzes on and off, and he feels it, a suddenly familiar presence outside, close and getting closer. _Ruby_, he thinks before it hits him that he couldn't have picked her out just weeks before, that he would have known simply _demon_ if he knew anything at all beyond the brief disruption in electric currents.

On the bed opposite him, Dean stiffens.

"Something's here," he says, hands already reaching for jacket and gun, but Sam crosses the distance between them in quick and sure steps, puts a hand on Dean's head, rubs his palm against the prickly spikes of hair.

"Hey," he smiles, leaning down to look straight into Dean's eyes. "_You look wiped. You should really get some shut-eye_."

Under his hand, he feels Dean's head loll, unsteady; his brother blinks his eyes sleepily, once, twice, and sighs, lets Sam lower him gently onto the mattress.

***

"Missed you in Ohio," he calls out, turning to lock the door behind him, and feels her hand brush over his.

"Figured three's a crowd," Ruby shrugs, hooking their arms together. "Walk with me."

"Is it true?" he asks, letting her draw him along down the road, away from the parking lot lights.

"Is what true?"

"What I've been reading. What I've been seeing. Azazel's children, a prophecy, Meg. Me, what I'm supposed to do."

"What do you think you're supposed to do?"

"You know," Sam tells her shortly, but he isn't irritated, not really. The night air is cool, and he smells cut grass and rain as they turn onto a side street, dark shadows of trees looming over the pavement.

"Sure. You're supposed to save Dean from an eternity of bloody and horrible slavery in The Pit, and you will. As for the rest of it – what, you know of some other way to save your brother? Been holding out on me, have you?"

"There is that ritual you paid for in Connecticut," he sighs, slowing his stride, trying to match his steps to hers; Ruby nods her head, blonde hair pulled into two tight braids like a little girl's.

"Divine intervention," she says; in the semi-darkness, her face looks bland, the make-up obscured, and her half-smile is pale and sincere. "Do you really think god will ever listen to the likes of us?"

"So it is all true," Sam sighs, and she stops abruptly, draws in a noisy lungful of air.

"Smells like it's going to rain soon. It's apocrypha, Sam. All stories are true, in their own way. You can't even build a lie without a grain of truth. What else do you want me to say, 'there's no smoke without fire'? Do you honestly think _The Book of Enoch_ was written by the prophet they attribute it to? Did Saint Peter really compose his Epistles? Does it matter? Does calling them fact or story make them any less valuable?"

"You're doing it again; trying to pass a whole lot of nothing for something."

"Sam, just listen to me," she sighs, rubbing at her temple. "The stories don't matter! What matters is what you're gonna do with them. You don't need me to reiterate any of it; you've heard it and you've read it and you've lived it, 'special' children to whom Azazel – call him what you like, they say he was Gadriel before the fall and Belial after – fed his own blood to make them seers and warriors. But only one of them was his chosen; conceived while he possessed the father. And maybe he meant you to lead armies or fulfill prophecies; what does it matter to you? Sure, he made plans, but that doesn't mean you have to follow them!"

"What _do_ I have to do, then?"

"Kill Melchiresa. Take your father's house. Claim the contract. Afterwards, nothing – or everything. Whatever you like. Give your brother his soul back or keep it in a jar, command legions or buy curtains and a white picket fence, you see where I'm going with this."

"Yeah. So, how do I make it work?"

A drop of rain lands on Sam's nose, and then another; it begins to sprinkle, rustling through the leaves, dotting the road dust a darker brown.

"You've already been doing it," Ruby says, turning back towards the main road and the motel, arm slipping from Sam's grasp. "Just open up and let it in; nothing more to it than that, really. Now, give me your phone. We'll need to make some calls."

She reaches out a hand and Sam pulls out his cell, drops it into her palm as she wrinkles her nose and frowns. "Damn it! My so-called no chip nail polish is, you guessed it, chipping. What a rip-off!" She accepts the phone with a final glance at her fingers, and punches in the numbers.

"Yes, hello. Sam Winchester calling for Special Agent William Berith – believe me, he's going to want to answer this one. Yes, I'll hold, thank you," she sighs. "All-night switchboard operators, hate them," she mouths at Sam and furrows her eyebrows.

"What the hell are you doing, calling a Special Agent? Are you out of your mind? The FBI –"

"Bill Berith's an old associate." Ruby is tapping her foot on the ground impatiently. "Come on, come on, come on, pick up the damn line!"

"Bill Berith," Sam repeats; the name sparks something in his memory, but he can't quite put his finger on it. "It's an unusual name, isn't it?"

"Uh, yeah," she nods, "please tell me you've at least skimmed the _Pseudomonarchia Daemonum_? You're supposed to be the smart one."

"The Weyer demonology text? What does that have to –"

Ruby interrupts him again, speaking slowly, a pinched expression on her face, as if she is explaining something important to a particularly ignorant child.

"In a minute, Billy's going to pick up the line and you're going to talk to him. Tell him you will meet him tomorrow morning at the Buffalo Field Office."

"That's it?" he asks incredulously. "That is the solution to all my problems?"

"Not exactly, but, trust me, it'll help. Oh, and when I say, "tell him", I mean exactly that. This isn't a request. Here," she hands the phone back to Sam, and he accepts, presses the warm plastic against his ear.

"Berith speaking," the phone pronounces in a thick, low voice, and Sam steels himself, feeling his insides coil.

"I'm going to be at the FBI Field Office in Buffalo tomorrow, at ten o'clock. I suggest you do the same," he says as coolly as he can manage, and hits the off button.

"If you want to make it by ten and still get your beauty sleep, you should really get going," Ruby tells him with a fond, approving smile.

 

**Buffalo, NY**

"So, this guy called one of Dad's phones?" Dean asks, putting the car into gear. "You've been keeping them charged this whole time?"

Sam nods easily; it's only half a lie, after all, maybe a little more, because he hasn't touched what few of John's things they have left for months now. Dad, Dean says, and Sam rolls the word around his mouth, lets the sharp edges of letters scrape at his tongue.

_Dad_, he repeats soundlessly, and just like that, the images come forth, pulled from some grand repository, something he hadn't witnessed, only guessed at in the moments John Winchester's last cup of coffee spilled to the floor, untouched. _Hospital stairs, basement access, big padlocks on doors labeled "storage" and "danger"._ Sam takes it all in frame by frame; the chalked seal of Azazel on the floor and the two men facing off in the semi-darkness, spiced by the hot, cloying smell of wax and burning sage. He blinks the basement away without bothering to listen to the rest of their exchange; he knows all the words that passed between his father and Dean's as they bargained for his brother's life.

This, this is what the visions were always meant to be like, knowledge he plucks out of the ether at his leisure, whatever he needs, whenever he needs it. All this time, he's been doing it the hard way, resisting, pushing, the headaches and the nausea and the blackouts, the frantic, frightened heartbeat and the pain – when all he needed was to just open up and let it in. He chuckles inwardly at the simplicity of it; it's cliche, it's something out of a self-help book or a top forty song, and it's coiled through him, buzzing in his fingertips, pulsing through his skin. Every cell in his body feels alive with it, his veins full of it, he is ready and aware like never before.

The road is blanketed in thick, early morning fog, but as the car glides along, Sam's sight is clear and focused. He feels occasional little tugs at his sides – not too far to the east, there is a haunted cemetery, a spectral caretaker that still tends the flowers and the walkways. A man has died violently in a little house off of a side street five weeks ago, and will not rest until his wife joins him. He wonders what Dean would think about all this before he blinks it away, fixating on the road ahead. They are still a couple of hours out of Buffalo, but the faint pull north begins growing stronger, steadier, splitting as they get closer, until finally, Sam can feel them moving in the city, four distinct presences, only one resonating familiar and welcome, a little shining beacon in the graying dawn.

_Ruby_, his mind names it immediately, _I go to prepare a place for you_. He knows she, in turn, can sense him getting closer, the same way that he knows it's her. The other three are guarded, wary; they can feel him coming, too, and they don't know what he brings with him. Sam blinks again, stretches into the leather of the car seat, and pushes them from his mind with an apprehensive sigh.

"M' head hurts; gonna take a nap," he tells Dean in a carefully tired voice. "Wake me up when we get there?"

***

"No way," Dean snorts, sorting through the crate. "Dude, check this out – I can't believe Dad kept it."

He wipes the brass trophy off with his sleeve, sneezing as the dust settles into a little grey cloud around him.

"Division champions, 1995 – what school was that? Buckley? Go, Bulldogs – wait, no, Badgers! That's right, the Buckley Badgers, world-class soccer team," he chuckles, "probably the closest you got to being a boy, Sammy."

Sam knows he is expected to huff and puff and bristle at his brother's casual dismissal of middle school sports, but he finds that all he can produce in reply is a vague smile. Dean dives back into the box, comes up for air with an even bigger grin plastered over his face, a sawed-off shotgun cradled fondly in his hands.

"My very first one; sixth grade," he pronounces proudly, setting it to the side. "Kinda hard to believe this stuff's been here all these years, huh?"

Sam nods absently, more concerned with what the rest of the day will bring than he is with whatever mementos John has squirreled away in this place. He breathes in deep, lets the semi-darkness of the storage unit fade away until he is pure concentration, and the city around him thrums and roils with energy. He catches the feel of Ruby right away; she is close, likely within a couple of miles and coming closer still, sure and ready. He spreads himself out wider, focusing on the other three, now clustered together to the northwest. Probing further, he detects a thin echo of some sort of safeguard around them, probably the demon equivalent of electric fence; it worries him enough to warrant a sharp snap back into his immediate surroundings, his brother still settled eagerly on the floor, legs crossed under him, three more massive boxes awaiting their turn.

Sam's phone beeps softly; it's nine forty, almost time, but he allows himself a few more moments of watching Dean. He had planned for proper responses to any number of reactions Dean may have had to digging through John Winchester's unit at Black Rock Self Storage, but he hadn't figured for genuine joy with a slight aftertaste of longing. It's almost as if Dean's forgotten they are here to investigate a possible break-in. He is happily waxing nostalgic about a lump of colored clay that may or may not have come from Sam's ninth grade art class, about some house Sam can barely recall living in, supposedly boasting a large, leafy oak tree in the front yard. Carefully, he focuses again, reaches out, feels for the warm spark that is Dean, and pushes in slightly.

_There is the oak tree, built for climbing, fifteen-year-old Sam stretched out on a low hanging branch, and there is baby Sammy bundled into a thick scarf and mittens, batting at the heavy falling snow, and there is tall, wide-shouldered Sam cramped into the passenger seat of the car, fiddling with something in the glove box, and there is Sam's hot mouth shivering against Dean's, hands clutched into the ugly flowered bedspread, and there is Sam and there is Sam and there is Sam, and – _

He pulls away, reeling under the weight of it, any remaining doubt as to what he must do evaporated in Dean's heat, and the space it had occupied filled with resolve and grim determination.

"Hey," he calls out softly, crouching down on the grimy cement floor, and snakes a hand under Dean's chin, feels the prickle of stubble over the beat of the little vein just there, leans in to nuzzle at his brother's face.

_Mine_.

"Get off me, you goddamn girl," Dean laughs, but doesn't pull back, opens his lips eagerly at the swipe of Sam's tongue, sucks and nips back just as greedily, letting Sam taste toothpaste and coffee and powdered sugar in the heat of his breath.

_Mine_, he thinks again as the phone's alarm beeps, must be quarter to, time to go, but Dean is relaxed against him, pliant and loose, and Sam can't help pulling him closer.

Hell can wait.

The clay figurine tumbles from his brother's hands, clinking helplessly against the floor as Sam manhandles him against a dusty shelf, pulls open his jeans like he's going for a speed record. There is too much cloth between them; the tails of Dean's shirt, falling below the hem of his jacket, the thick denim he is working down Dean's thighs. He presses his lips against the soft cotton of Dean's underwear, mouths his half-hard dick through the fabric.

Dean shivers and jerks his hips, trying to grab against the shelf for balance, but Sam reaches out, finds the rough, warm fingers, pulls at them until Dean takes the hint, brings them down to tangle in Sam's hair. His dick is tenting the cloth now, heavy and solid, even hotter than the rest of him, and Sam gives it another press of lips, traces its length through the worn cotton.

"Fuckin' tease," Dean growls above as Sam keeps on stroking without ever touching skin, little circles first with his knuckles, then his entire palm. He slides his thumb over the head, feels the little dot of moisture on the fabric, parts his lips as he stares up at Dean, blowing cool breath against the button fly.

"Sam," Dean groans, pulling helplessly at his hair, "just do it already. Please. Come on. Sammy."

His own cock strains at his khakis at the sound of that eager, needy voice hitching around his name, but there is not enough time for this to be about anything other than Dean.

"Gonna make it feel so good," he mutters, rubbing his cheek into Dean's thigh. _So good that you forget everything that isn't me, now and tomorrow and twenty seven days after that, and twenty eight, and a thousand times twenty eight. A million_. He latches onto a mouthful of cloth and tugs sharply, pulling Dean's boxers down.

He allows himself one last teasing lick at the very tip, salty-sweet on his tongue, before he snakes his hands around Dean's hips, cups his fingers over the smooth, tight skin of his ass and pulls Dean forward into his mouth. Sloppy wet swirl of tongue around the head and then he slides down fast and sure, buries his face in the soft prickle of hair, mouths a tight circle around hot, smooth skin.

Dean is rocking against him, tugging haphazardly at his hair, whimpering as Sam spreads his cheeks apart, brushes a knuckle across his hole, just a slight hint of pressing in. Tongues Dean up and down and around as he sucks him into his throat, lets him thrust harder, faster, spit and pre-come slicking the way.

He can't tell where Dean's noises end and his begin, sweet little whines and moans full of pleasure and promise and need, and Dean is fucking his mouth in earnest now, hot, salty thrusts between his swollen lips. It's too much, too fast; he can't do anything but ride it out, let Dean's hands hold him steady as he tries to breathe, everything reduced to a primitive rhythm of inhale, exhale, swallow. Somewhere far above him, his brother pants out his own loud and erratic beat, "Fuck, fuck, gonna, oh, god, fuck, Sam."

_Mine_, he thinks as Dean jerks against him, coming with a final strangled call of his name.

***

"I'm good. Better than good, actually," he refuses softly as Dean moves to undo his zipper. Dean's face is flushed, sweaty; he is sure he looks no better and the thought makes him pleased. He is making _them_ wait, and he is making it real obvious to see why; if that doesn't show how unafraid and unconcerned he is, Sam doesn't know what will. He lingers on Dean's face for another moment, takes in the pink cheeks, the little line of freckles bright across his brother's nose before he stands up decisively.

"_Dean,_" he says with a meaningful smile, pitching his voice just right. _"You're going to stay right here and look over everything very carefully. Try to figure out what exactly the thief took. Talk to the manager again; make sure he's told you everything he knows. I'm going to check out the neighborhood, see if anyone else heard or saw anything useful."_

"Ok, Sammy," Dean nods trustingly, and for a split second, guilt thumps dully into Sam's gut. There was never any break-in, no thief. John's storage unit was a convenient, easy excuse to come up here so he can do what needs doing. _Needs doing, for Dean_, he reminds himself, and lets the guilt sink and drown.

***

Ruby meets him on the steps of what she quickly declares to be the ugliest building in the city.

"Hmm, you're all… sweaty," she says, offering him a gloved hand. "Not that it's a bad look on you. I'm kind of impressed, actually. Little tumble here and there does wonders for keeping a man in blissful ignorance; you caught on quick. Don't bother saying, 'it's not like that'; we don't have all day. There's a fine boundary between fashionably late and insulting, and you can't afford to cross it – yet."

"It's not like that," Sam tells her anyway as they walk down the street. "I can't afford to have him worry right now; there's too much at stake. He's got less than a month if I fuck this up, I can at least make it a happy one."

"Yeah, that's pretty much what I just said," Ruby shrugs. "Relax. You're a natural. The only way you could fuck this up is by second-guessing yourself. You do extremely well when you don't over-think things. Oh, hey, are you armed?"

"I left the Colt with Dean. Officially, he can't be touched for twenty seven more days, but I don't want to take any chances. Got my throwing knives and a Glock with me, though."

"I had a gun named after me once, you know, the Gabilondo Ruby," she says wistfully. "Well, not after me, exactly, but close enough. It was basically just a modified Browning No. 2, except it had the unfortunate tendency to fire while being loaded. Anyway, let me carry the Glock and the knives, would you?"

Sam stops, surveying the far from empty sidewalk around them.

"I'm sorry; you want to trade arsenals in the middle of the street?"

"Are you seriously worried? What are they going to do, arrest you? You really need to stop thinking in those terms, Sam. It's not like you can't talk your way out of practically anything now, and soon, you won't even have to. Come on, hand over the weapons. Trust me; it'll make for a much better entrance that way. Hey, if it makes you more comfortable, we can step into that alleyway right there, for that nice and cozy B-movie experience."

He feels off without the reassuring weight of the Glock at his hip; Ruby inspects the gun briefly before tucking it away into her handbag.

"You have all the weapons you need, Sam," she says, reaching for his hand with leather-clad fingers, stroking over the palm lightly. "Right here," she brushes a finger against his other hand, "and right here." Her gloves are black, as is her leather jacket, and her lips are a delicate, pale pink as she reaches up on tip-toe to press a finger against his mouth. "And right here."

Her curls are pulled away from her face, brushed carefully into a stern, all-business do, and for a moment, Sam wonders what the demon would say if he reached out and ruffled them, spread them messy and free over her shoulders.

"Like this?" she smiles, reaching up to pull a pin out of her bun, shakes her head like a model in a shampoo commercial until there is a blond bed-head halo around her face. "You like it better like this?"

"It's not a bad look on you," he says, pulling the last knife out from under his jacket. "Here, take one more."

***

There is a metal detector just past the revolving doors of the Buffalo Field Office, and Sam sees the first one of the three remaining demons as they approach the frame.

"Right through here, Sir, Ma'am," the uniformed guard calls out, not even bothering to hide the pupil-less black of his eyes under his cap. Ruby flashes him a brilliant smile as she steps through the metal detector, shrugs her shoulders at the resulting loud beeping.

"Just a moment, please," she says, undoing the snaps of her jacket one by one. "Here," she says, carefully laying two knives into the tray to the side, then bends down to pull one more out of each tall leather boot, another out of the tight back pocket of her jeans.

"Always wanted to do that," she purrs, pulling the last knife out of her shirtfront, letting the sheath drag over smooth, pale skin. She unzips her purse and shakes it unceremoniously, dumping the contents every which way. The Glock makes a dull thud as it hits the container; Sam almost expects it to discharge, but Ruby keeps right on smiling.

"That should do it," she announces, taking another step forward, as the metal detector beeps again, loud and shrill. "Oh, right, almost forgot," she says, producing a jangling set of keys. "Take good care of these for me, would you?"

The look the guard gives Sam is full of so much venom, that he can't resist spreading his arms to his sides, tilting his mouth in a crooked, devil-may-care smile as he walks forward through the frame. It stays silent.

"Seventh floor," the guard says, putting a new, empty tray next to the metal detector. "He is expecting you."

"Wasn't that fun?" Ruby asks as the elevator chugs up, groaning its way through every floor. "Annoyed the crap out of security, and it gave you a little bit of added authority – you know, important enough to have an armed-to-the-teeth guard, confident enough to be empty-handed yourself."

"You have no respect for firearms," Sam tells Ruby; she is busily inspecting her cleavage in the shiny metal of the elevator door.

"None at all," she agrees, pulling her shirt down a fraction of an inch as the elevator dings open. A black-eyed man in a suit and tie meets them at the doors, responds to Ruby's quick, shallow nod with a deeper one, hands clasped in front of him. "Naamah," he greets her, but not Sam, making an obvious effort to look away from Sam's face as he guides them into the corner office. He backs away step by tiny step after he ushers them through the door.

_"Relax,"_ Ruby's voice echoes in Sam's mind. _"I'll talk you through this."_

Berith regards the both of them as they enter, eyes as black as Sam expected flitting from him to Ruby and back again as he sips at a large mug of coffee. Sam returns the stare impassively, takes in the demon's charcoal grey suit, light blue shirt with white cuffs and collar, the small round glasses over a wide, lined face, slicked back salt and pepper hair on his head, a day's growth of still-dark beard. He looks like he belongs in the suit, a perfectly rendered stereotype of a g-man, down to the ID badge pinned on his lapel, complete with photo and barcode. _Bill Berith. Field Coordinator._

"_Now look at him again,_" Ruby presses into his head once more. "_I mean, _ really look, _ beyond the window dressing._"

He does as she says; _reaches_ out in that already oh-so-familiar way, lets his sight slide over the coffee mug with its FBI emblem, then up, and has to blink his eyes once, twice, to reconcile the images, superimposed on each other. There is still the suit, the stripes on Berith's tie, his impeccably white collar; but beneath the silver rims of the glasses and the shadow of scruff there is another face, swarthy and shrewd, a shock of flame-bright ginger hair over a gold band. His hands end in jagged red claws, little crackles of fire playing between the fingers; the familiar black dusty whirlwind Sam knows means 'demon' twists and swirls all around and through him.

He sneaks a glance at Ruby next, sharp little teeth in her soft, inviting mouth, the lips a glistening, wet red. Her hair is a pillow-rumpled cloud of spun gold over her naked shoulders, the same gold curls between her legs. Miles of creamy white skin in between, scarlet motes of nipples; the coils of black smoke slither up her shamelessly bare thighs, winding and twisting into her, full of tantalizing and terrible promise.

Sam wants to, but can't bring himself to look down at his own hands, grateful for Berith's thick voice snapping him back into the room.

"If you've come to ask for my help, I'm afraid I'll have to disappoint you. I will not fight a war for you, Malkira," Berith pronounces, setting his coffee onto his desk.

Ruby's arms are folded serenely over her little black jacket; "_Repeat after me,_" she intones in Sam's head. "_I do not require it of you. You may keep your twenty six legions; all I need is already at my disposal. However, I will not –_"

"I will not," Sam repeats, steel in his voice, "tolerate interference. This feud between my sister and I, it is a family affair, and I intend to settle it as such, as is my right. You will not choose sides, or attempt to influence the outcome in any way, and for my part, I will not forget your willingness to comply with my suggestion."

"You ask that I do nothing," Berith clarifies, taking another gulp from his cup. "I must say, I am surprised. I expected to have to bargain down to non-interference. Your sister never got past demanding your head on a platter."

"You will find I am far more reasonable than my sister," Sam smiles, showing teeth.

"I suppose I will, Lord Samael," Berith chuckles, punching numbers into the telephone on his desk. "A small gesture of my 'non-interference', yes?" he says, and presses the button for the speaker phone.

"Henricksen," a startlingly familiar voice says on the other end of the line.

"Victor, Bill Berith here. You're being pulled off the Dean Winchester case, effective immediately. What? No, I wouldn't expect anything less from you, but do try to have all the necessary paperwork completed by the end of the day tomorrow," Berith says before hanging up.

***

"So, what was the point of that little exercise?" he asks, taking Ruby's elbow. The leather of her sleeve is butter-soft, smooth, and Sam can't resist running a finger down her arm, elbow to delicate wrist.

"You mean, aside from the sheer fun of tormenting Berith's lackeys? He'll do as he promised – he'd never stand against me – but he's not all that thrilled at having to pander to a meatbag. No offense, of course."

"Right."

"Don't sulk," she says, patting his arm. "Today, you showed him you're serious. He's the kind of guy who'll respect that."

"But he still won't help me."

"Don't underestimate the power of Berith's respect. And, really, Sam, don't sweat it. He'll like you when you win."

Inside Ruby's pocket, a phone trills, and she clucks her tongue in satisfaction as she checks her messages.

"There we go. News travels fast. Come on, let's go talk to an associate who's willing to get a lot more hands on, shall we?"

 

**Andover, MA**

One day left and he wakes to Dean's face next to him in the bed, cheek propped up on an elbow, hair still wet from the shower. Dean hasn't had it cut in a while, and the damp strands curl slightly over the tops of his ears, little droplets of moisture sliding down his freshly shaven cheek. Sam reaches out a hand, tugs on the curl and lets go, rubs a finger down to Dean's earlobe, trails it across the smooth skin of his neck and back up to the jaw line, over the little divot in his chin.

"Hey. Have you been watching me sleep?"

Dean shrugs one shoulder and pushes closer, cold, wet feet burrowing under the blanket and between Sam's warm ones, knee nudging at Sam's leg. Sam's thumb's still resting right under Dean's lower lip, and Dean sticks out his tongue, mouths at the fingertip, bends down his head to bring Sam's entire palm to his lips.

He can feel Dean's hot breath whuffing over his fingers as Dean's tongue traces little circles over his skin, pushes at the delicate webs between the digits, slick and warm. It stings a bit when Dean licks over the barely healed cut in the center of his palm, fresh from last night when Sam dripped blood into a chalked sigil and spoke to two lesser lieutenants before their master finally showed to bow his head; a strange demon with a delicate woman's face and a man's shape below, the bells threaded through his hair ringing softly as he swore to listen and obey.

The cut still throbs, and he winces slightly right before Dean pulls away.

"Sorry," he says quietly, "I'm sorry, Sammy," and his eyes are heavy, unfocused, pupils wide and dark.

Sam is the one who presses their lips together, cuts off Dean's words with a swipe of tongue, but it's Dean's hands that come up to push him onto his back, Dean's thigh moving between Sam's, nudging his legs open as he tugs the blanket down and off.

"Sorry, sorry," he mumbles against Sam's mouth, kissing him hard and frantic, teeth closing over his lower lip as Dean maps it out with his tongue.

"Want you to feel it," he whispers, lips trailing down Sam's throat, sharp little bites as he settles in the hollow between neck and shoulder, fastens his mouth over Sam's skin and sucks, hard, merciless, grinds his hips down against Sam like it's the only thing he has left to do.

Sam doesn't know exactly what Dean's sorry for, and it doesn't matter anyway, even if Dean's asking for absolution for thinking this is the last time, for making his deal or thinking they're gonna have to keep it, for the way he can't stop pushing into Sam, lips and teeth and tongue, hard cock sliding between his thighs.

Dean sits up, bracing himself on one arm, watches Sam's face as he sucks the fingers of the other hand into his mouth; they are glistening wet when he pulls them out, coated with spit.

"Do it," Sam hisses when Dean trails his hand down Sam's belly, teases around the base of his cock and then dips below, traces a slick finger over his hole. It's good, but it isn't enough, and Sam arches up, pushes himself into Dean's hand as he moans for more, "Want it, Dean, come on, want you in me."

One finger slides into him, slow, careful, and Sam shudders, rolls his hips as Dean adds another, twists them, in past the knuckle and then back again, opening him up.

"Lube under the pillow next to you," he rasps; Sam reaches back with his hand, feels for the plastic bottle Dean must've put there first thing in the morning, watches his brother pop the cap and slick himself, cock dark and heavy in his hand.

It doesn't last long once Dean's inside him, Dean's fingers digging into his hips hard enough to mark, to bruise; he wraps a hand around his dick, jerks himself in sloppy quick pulls, feels Dean shake and shiver above him.

***

The bed's a mess, bunched up sheets and the sharp smell of _them_, salty and bitter; Dean reaches out, draws a hand through the slick on Sam's belly, rests a palm over his hip, fingers rubbing at the jut of bone.

"Gonna need another shower," Sam grins, covering Dean's hand with his own, feeling for the thin bracelet around Dean's wrist, skin surprisingly soft under the woven cord.

"Yeah," Dean mutters half-heartedly; his eyes are unfocused again, staring somewhere past Sam where there is nothing but plain white wall. "Sam," he says after a long minute, "Sam, I can hear them."

_Hellhounds_.

He strokes his thumb over Dean's wrist, keeps stroking absently as he reaches out with his mind, seeks for snarling, slavering jaws and the red glow of eyes, thick howls as the things draw nearer, but there is nothing.

"Been hearing them for, for, three days now," Dean whispers, and Sam reaches out again, farther, wider, and still there is nothing but the normal buzz of _demon, spectre, sorceress_, small, insignificant things that have no bearing on anything happening here. He wonders if the howling's just part of the package, a hallucination, a signal, _your marker's up and you'd better be ready_, or if he can't hear them because they're not his to hear. Because they're coming for Dean, but Sam's not the one who sent them, not the one they roll over for and obey, _not yet_.

"Look at me," he tells Dean, pulling him in closer, until their faces almost touch, close enough to kiss if he wanted, and he does, will, after he makes everything better. "We have the Colt, remember, four bullets –"

"Not enough; there's more than four," Dean starts, and Sam shushes him with a fingertip over his bitten lip.

"It's gonna be enough. I have a ritual. And it's gonna work."

***

He forces Dean to have breakfast, something more than just coffee; watches Dean swallow every bite of eggs and crispy bread, but can't stomach much of it himself. He doesn't feel hungry, only impatient, but it's not yet time, and he twitches his foot against the table, wills darkness to settle over the town, but the sun doesn't listen.

They drive around Andover for close to an hour, no direction in mind, U-turns and forks and traffic circles, Zeppelin on the stereo, and it feels like deja vu, like it's happened already, time and again, even though Sam knows it hasn't, except for in his head.

He's seen it, more times than he cares to count; he knows they'll fuck again at three, quick and dirty, trying desperately to fit into the Impala's back seat. He knows he'll bump his head on the ceiling and Dean'll grumble and bitch about the terrible effect they're undoubtedly having on the upholstery, but he'll lean back and let Sam suck him off, fist his fingers in Sam's hair, tugging and pulling like he wants the pain to last.

He knows Dean's face will turn ashen as the sun settles down, inching towards the horizon with impeccable, inevitable timing, streetlights winking on throughout the town, silver halogen buzz.

At ten thirty, he's lacing his shoes, reaching under the bed for the bag of supplies he's placed there the night before, putting a heavy hand on Dean's shoulder.

"Let's go."

They drive out in silence, Sam at the wheel, to a crossroads north of town, over route 114 and past the country club. Sam stops the car near Stevens pond, gravel lot deserted and bare, and begins to put down the salt lines.

"Don't worry, it's not welshing or weaseling out if you come in armed," he says, thrusting the Colt into Dean's hands. "It's not like you ever go anywhere without packing. You're not – you shouldn't – won't need to use it," he amends, guiding Dean into the circle of salt. "It'll work; the ritual. I swear."

"You can't use that gun on her, Sam," Ruby told him, chin on her hands as she perched on his bed two nights ago, Dean sleeping less than two feet away. "That's not how it works. It's, well – no offense – a meatbag weapon. I mean, it'll kill her, sure, but –"

"It won't get me what I need," he nodded, looking her in the eye.

"Your own weapons; remember, here, and here," she smiled, leaning over, and pressed her cool lips to his hands, one by one, leaving behind smudged red prints. "And here," a fingertip pressing against his mouth, the nail long and sharp, little clear gem studded into the dark polish.

"You won't be there, will you," he asked, and she agreed, voice lowering to a soft whisper.

"No interference, no choosing sides, no attempting to influence the outcome in any way. Rules, Sam. But, hey, you always know how to reach me."

***

They don't touch; don't look at each other as Dean kneels in the circle's center, Colt grasped tightly in his hands. It would feel too much like goodbye, and they are not saying goodbye, not now, when the minutes tick ever closer to midnight with every passing heartbeat.

Sam lights the candles, one by one, setting them up along the lines in the ground, pushes apart the gravel and scrapes signs and runes into the dirt, Azazel's sigil and then two others, almost identical to the first, but with one extra line through each. He starts to speak as he finishes drawing, low at first, hesitant whispers as he lifts a small knife from its sheath, holds it tight and opens the cut in his palm afresh.

"Blood to blood," he mutters, watching the red well up over his skin, "blood of my blood, in my father's house."

Red droplets slither down his fingers and slide down into the dirt, mix with the gravel and the wax over the scraped twisting lines, dark stains in the pale light of the streetlamp.

"Blood to blood," he calls louder, switches to Greek, then Aramaic, voice getting steadier, stronger, pulse hammering in his ears like a war drum.

The candles extinguish as one, filling the air with a burnt, stale taste, and a gust of wind rips through the road, rustles through leaves and grass and dirt, smudges over the blood-traced sigils in the ground.

"Hi, Sam," she says, stepping into the crossroads. "Fancy seeing you here."

She is wearing the same body he's seen in his visions; tall and very thin, brown hair gelled up into playful little spikes over a pretty face, heart-shaped mouth and a smattering of freckles over her upturned nose.

"Hi, Meg," he nods, and throws out his hands, watches her slam back into the ground with a satisfying thump.

"That wasn't very nice," she hisses, standing; a wave of force pummels into his chest, and he sways but manages to keep upright as she wrinkles her nose.

"So, you can do a little trick. It works much better when you don't have to guide it with overt movements. You know; the element of surprise."

"Like this?" Sam asks, inclining his head; her borrowed body lifts from the ground like a puppet being pulled along. He blinks, and lets her fall, watches one of her legs twist under her at a painful, awkward angle.

"Better. Still not all that impressive, though. What do you think you're trying to accomplish here, Sam?"

This part is easy; he's watched it happen in dozens, hundreds of permutations, minute variations in dialogue, her words and his mingling in the warm night air.

_"A salt line? Really? You think salt's going to keep me away from him?"_

"If the salt won't, I will. You think this kind of thing goes down without my say-so?"

"Break the fucking salt line, Sam, I mean it."

"No. You don't get to take him from me. What's mine is mine, and I won't share."

"Sweetheart, you can say it as many times as you like, but not a one will make it so."

"That's where you're wrong, sister."

"You don't have a sister."

"That'll be true soon enough. I win this one. I have seen it."

He focuses on her face, blinks and _looks_ the way Ruby showed him, sees the dark, shadowy shape under the skin, eyes like hot yellow fire and black smoke filling every cell of her borrowed meatsuit. The girl is dead already; when he concentrates, he can see the traces of old wounds over her stomach, a little star of a bullet hole in the center of her forehead, a crust of old blood filling her mouth, dark and decayed.

In the end, it's almost too easy, anticlimactic, _reaching_ inside her and twisting, squeezing, ripping spectral claws through skin and demon both; black blood welling up over her lips, drip-drip-dripping onto the gravel, and Meg – Melchiresa – is screaming, a broken, inhuman sound like nothing he's ever heard. He _pulls_ at the tendrils of shadow inside her, unravels them from her flesh, but they don't dissipate, don't burn away, like the sorry ghost of Charles Guthrie. Instead, he feels them like a jolt to his own skin, as they congeal and coil around him, no longer part of her, but there for the taking, and he opens his mouth, throws his arms to the sides and lets them in.

It feels incredible, like the best high, like Dean's mouth around his cock, swallowing down his orgasm, like nothing and everything all at once, and he reels back under the strength of it, sinks down to the earth to catch his breath.

_It's done. It's fucking done, fucking finished, he's alive and Dean is alive and it's done, done, done_, he thinks, and that feels even better.

Sam staggers up from the ground, body still buzzing, electric, and can almost see the energy crackling between his fingers, little golden halos around his skin.

"Dean," he yells, swinging around, "Dean, it's over, it's fucking over… Dean?"

His brother stands inside the circle of salt, damp patches of mud staining his jeans at the knees, eyes dark and unfocused, looking out at somewhere beyond Sam, far into the darkness, Colt clutched in his upraised hand.

"Hey, hey, come on, it's over, she isn't getting back up," Sam calls, reaching out with his arms; Dean's mouth is red, bitten, and he wants to kiss it, wants to grab Dean and not let go until they're breathless, until he's sure Dean is solid and real under his hands, heartbeat and warmth and his wicked, talented tongue. It's not a long distance between them, but it suddenly feels like too much; he has to touch Dean, now, clutch at him and know this is it; he takes another look at Dean's pale face and breaks into a run.

It's like hitting a solid stone wall, head-on.

"Sammy," Dean breathes out, just as Sam understands what's happening, looks down on the ground and sees the salt spread before him in a thick curved line.

"Dean," he breathes back, "you can come out of the circle now, it's done, Meg's dead."

"Yeah, I see that," Dean says, remaining perfectly still.

"Dean, come on, man, come here," he repeats, but his brother shakes his head, and takes a step back.

"No."

"I didn't want to do it like this, Dean," Sam sighs, and lets the power spill from his lips. "_Step out of the circle, now_."

The streetlight makes the salt at their feet sparkle, each grain like a little treasure. It's almost hard to believe that something Sam's put on his popcorn, stirred into his soup and spread along hundreds of windows and doors can suddenly keep him away from his brother, but it does. He can feel it between them, as strong as a brick wall, and beyond the phantom stonework, Dean isn't moving.

"_Come here, Dean_," he repeats, harder, stronger, enough to make the bulb flicker and hiss. "_Come to me_."

"No."

His heart crashes into his ribs, pumps painfully in his throat. Air squeezes out of his lungs, forces its way back in, chest collapsing, expanding, in, out, just like normal, like the world hasn't screeched to a grinding halt here at the crossroads, sparkling salt and the dead girl facedown in the gravel, dark hair matted with dirt and congealing blood. Dean's red-rimmed eyes, his pretty red mouth the only part of him that's moving. _No_.

"_Dean, put down the gun and come here, now_."

The streetlight above them flickers again, hisses and pops and sputters out. It takes him a moment to adjust to the darkness, Dean's face and hands pale, wavering stains in the black. _Dean hasn't said 'no' in thirty seven days, Dean doesn't say 'no', not to him, never to him_. It's not possible; it's wrong. He's hearing it wrong. He's tired, worn out from the fight, he's imagining things; _it's not possible_.

"How many times have you done that to me, Sammy?" Dean's voice is calm, casual like he's asking about the weather. "How many times before I started remembering? How many times before Buffalo," he asks, cocking his head. "It did start before Buffalo, didn't it?"

"W-what?" he manages through tongue and lips suddenly gone dry. "Dean, no, it isn't like that!"

"Yeah? Why don't you tell me how it is, then? Take your time – I ain't going anywhere."

Sam can see clearer now, eyes having adjusted to the scant moonlight, the distant glow of streetlamps up towards the corner. Dean aims the gun with both hands, fingers clutching at the metal like it's the only thing holding him steady. Stupidly, he notices that the cuff of Dean's flannel is unbuttoned around his right wrist, or maybe the button is gone altogether, tumbled off and rolled under a motel bed, into the bottom of a cramped duffel, beneath a leather car seat, lost.

There is something hanging off of Dean's wrist, glint of chain and a dark lumpy shape visible in the open shirt cuff. He can't quite make out if it means something before Dean is talking again, short sharp words slicing through air and salt.

"So, you gonna collect on that contract now, or wait for me to croak on my own?"

"Don't – don't say that. That's not funny, Dean."

"You hear me laughing?" Dean asks, mirthless and dry. "I didn't want to believe it. Even tonight I didn't want to believe it, but you made the choice for me, Sam. So, come on, then, do your new job. Take your dues and lead your armies."

"Armies?" Sam repeats dumbly, clenching his hands into fists, feeling the scrape of nails against his skin. "I don't have to lead any armies, Dean; I don't have to do anything I don't want. I'm not… not beholden to hell, the demons don't own me!"

He cringes at his choice of words as soon as they leave his mouth, but Dean only chuckles, lips twisting into a small, bitter smile.

"You don't really believe that, do you? Who'd you talk to about it, Ruby? That other one, what was his name, the one you ordered to deal with Gordon? Maybe the one you summoned last night – I don't remember what you called him. Pai-something; I'm not too good with infernal names. Oh, and I was supposed to be sleeping. You telling me you wanted to do all that?"

"Want has nothing to do with it," he grits out, driving his thumbnail into the meat of his palm. "I did what I had to."

"All you had to do was let me die."

The earth trembles under his feet, or maybe he is too exhausted to stand still; he doesn't know.

"You think letting you die would have ended anything? Meg, she wasn't going to stop once she had you; she was gonna come after me, after Bobby, after everyone we've ever dealt with. I saw it, Dean, I told you; don't you remember?"

And that's the rub, isn't it, he thinks, the realization slamming into his skull. Dean _doesn't_ remember; not the color of Sam's eyes above him, not the blood from his broken lip, not the words and promises, _Vade retro, Satana_, _I won't let her have you; I swear. I'll pay any price_.

Dean realizes it at the same time.

"What else don't I remember, Sam?" he asks, fingers jumping over the Colt's trigger. "You never answered me, you know. How many times've you done that to me? You lose count yet?" He takes a long, shuddering breath, shifts his weight from foot to foot; the toes of his boots are so close to the salt line, less than an inch and it'd be broken, he'd be out, he'd be _Sam's_. "You know what it feels like, when you open your mouth? You do it harder than Andy; harder than Ansem. It's like this fog in my head. I still want to do what you say; even when I know it's you tellin' me to want it."

"I did it to keep you safe!" Sam yells, railing against the salt barrier. It doesn't hurt, exactly, but neither does it feel right. It's a wall where a wall oughtn't to be, _between him and Dean_, and everything in him rages at the thought, wants to break it, smash it, tear it down.

The words are so quiet he has to strain to hear them, read them in the movements of Dean's lips and tongue like a deaf man.

"What's going to keep me safe now?"

He doesn't say, "from you", but Sam would have to be deaf not to hear it, and that hurts, so much more than the salt.

"I'd never hurt you," he throws back, "you fucking know I'd never hurt you," and Dean flinches away from the salt line.

"You got a lot of nerve, sayin' that, Sam," he hisses. "How can you say that to me? Look at me, look, how the fuck can you say that to me?"

Dean's hands are trembling around the gun, the dark eye of the barrel shaking between them. The already loose cuff of his shirt falls open further and Sam sees it, a small lump of fur hanging from a chain wrapped around Dean's wrist, something that would look much more at home on a spare set of keys. A rabbit's foot, Sam guesses, Dean has a rabbit's foot strapped around his arm, and everything finally makes sense.

It's the only thing that explains how Dean's been resisting his voice.

Not _a_ rabbit's foot; _the_ rabbit's foot. A cursed gift from the Fae to some foolish human, _gives you the devil's own luck as long as you have it on your person_. He remembers Bela Talbot's cramped back room, the spreadsheets and the slides and the television on mute. _I tried to track it down, of course, but someone else got there before me. I think it must have been someone who knew what he'd come across, because I haven't heard 'boo' about it since_; trust John Winchester to have it squirreled away in his storage unit.

"Dean, you idiot," he moans, "you know it's gonna kill you if you lose it!"

"Found it up in Buffalo; figured I was dead either way," Dean tells him, that ugly smile still playing over his mouth. "Thought a little bit of extra luck couldn't hurt. Who knew I really did need it, huh?"

"Dean" is the only word Sam still knows how to say, but he tries, gasps out others in a disobedient tongue.

"I did it for you," he screams at the barrel of the Colt, at Dean's fingers dancing their broken dance over the trigger. "All of it, I did for you, can't you see that?"

His eyes are wet, golden sparks flaring out somewhere on the fringes of his vision. His shirt clings to his back, his shoulders, cold and damp with sweat, and Dean is a shaking pale blur with a dark smudge of gun in the center.

"Dean," he begs. "Dean, please. Just come out of the circle, come here, to me."

Not being able to reach his hands out and touch Dean is maddening. Salt, a cursed trinket and a gun that's seen too much blood, these are the things Dean clings to, the things he uses to keep Sam away.

"Please," he whispers through the yellow haze, taking a small step forward, as much as the boundary between them will allow. "Please, Dean. I need you."

They don't say these words often. It's a rule, an unwritten Winchester code, but he's broken so many already; what's one more, now?

"I love you."

Dean's familiar green eyes and freckles sway into focus, close, so close, yet still untouchable.

"Demons lie," Dean says.

Maybe Dean says something else, too; Sam doesn't know. He sees nothing except the twisted line of salt on the ground, yellow moonlight making it glimmer and shine.

"I'm still me," he snarls, calling the power into his hands, his eyes, his mouth. The ground beneath them trembles and shakes, and he is sure that this time, Dean can feel it, too. Cracks are running through the dirt, little earthquakes sending bits of gravel rolling, scattering shimmering dust over Dean's boots and into the grass until there is nothing between them but air.

He doesn't feel the pain at first, only his legs folding down to the ground, kneecaps hitting earth and sharp, jagged rock. Dean's face dances in his vision and blurs away, the gun lowering with a sudden flash and a crackle of thunder. The world moves in freeze frames; Dean's trembling hands, Dean's back, the blue and green flannel stretched thin over his shoulder blades, the car door creaking as it opens.

The Impala's headlights swipe over him and Sam sees the blood oozing through his jeans, a wisp of smoke curling over his right thigh; the engine screams and so does Sam, pain blooming in his leg, pulsing hot and red. For a long, bright second, he sees Dean's face above the glare, and then the car squeals, turning, and he is left in darkness.

He doesn't try to stand. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out his phone, instead, fingers pausing briefly over the wrong speed dial.

"I'm almost there," Ruby's voice says from the plastic. "You don't actually need a telephone to call me, you know that, right?"

"I know," he tells her, staring dazedly into the road as he ends the call. He puts a hand to the throbbing pulse in his thigh, presses down hard and listens to the pain. Dean couldn't miss; not with _the devil's own luck_, but there it is, pain instead of oblivion, Sam's blood mixing into the dirt at the crossroads, and only three bullets left.

 

**Epilogue**

"Don't worry; I've got someone on him at all times. After all, how many places does he have left to hide in?"

"He's not going to be hiding; not Dean," Sam tells her, slowly dripping the holy water over her head, watching it stain her long, blond hair. "Does that hurt?"

"What do you think?" Ruby grunts through clenched teeth. "Why don't you try it?"

"You think something like that works on something like me?" he says quietly, not looking at her. Sam's leg throbs, sharp flashes of pain ripping through from thigh to knee, and he settles down, sighing. "Dean's got endless luck now, doesn't he? Enough to outgun anything we send for him."

She licks up a stray drop of water from her cheek, hissing as the liquid touches her tongue.

"He'll lose it soon enough. Everybody loses it."

"That'll kill him."

"And then you'll have him."

"I don't want him like that. I want him to… I want him," Sam trails off, corks the bottle and slips it into his pocket. He cocks his head as Ruby stands up, shuddering. "Did you always know this is how it would end, Lilith?"

She shakes her head, letting the last droplets of the holy water slide down to her milky white breast, moans as one rolls over a puffy scarlet nipple.

"You think this is an end? Nothing has ended. This is only a beginning," she says, trailing a finger down the wet, glistening stripe on her skin. "Lilith," she repeats softly. "There was a time they'd cut out a man's tongue for saying my name."

"Hm. I don't remember reading that anywhere," he tells her, wraps a hand in her hair and yanks hard, pulling her closer in. "I did read something I've been meaning to ask you about, though. Aren't you supposed to have three other sisters?"

"Greedy," she laughs delightedly. "Four of us, Naamah and Igereth and Eisheth and Lilith, all for you? No, no sisters. They're just names, like yours. Malkira. Seir. Samael."

"Are those really my names?" he asks, and she laughs again, leans in until she is close enough to kiss.

"They don't have to be. You can pick one to your liking. Forge a new one, Sammy."

He looks down at his hands, watches the shadows dance under the skin.

"Don't call me that," he whispers, pressing a finger against her hot parted lips, slick and glossy and ruby-red.

Now we are come to our Kingdom,  
But my love's eyelids fall.  
All that I wrought for, all that I fought for,  
Delight her nothing at all.  
My crown is of withered leaves,  
For she sits in the dust and grieves.  
_Now we are come to our Kingdom!_

\-- from Rudyard Kipling's "The Kingdom"


End file.
